


Recurrence

by 28ghosts



Series: Return [1]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2018-08-22 08:19:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8279215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/28ghosts/pseuds/28ghosts
Summary: Ethan Goodnight St. John is a recovered alcoholic who avoids leaving the house where he lives with his sister-in-law, Emma St. John, and niece, Rose Creek St. John. And he isn't sure how he knows his niece's gymnastics coach, Billy Park, but he's sure seen his face in dreams before -- and not all of them good dreams.[Reincarnation AU / rating may change]





	1. Ethan

Tuesday night, Ethan is cleaning up the dishes even though Emma’d told Rose to do it when he hears Emma walk up behind him, careful to walk loud as she always does. “Hey,” she says.

Ethan clears his throat but doesn’t look up from the sink. “Hey, yourself.”

“This Friday, Emma’s gymnastics coach is coming over for dinner, Coach Park.” She leans one hip against the counter and leans her head in towards Ethan, trying to catch his eyes. “If you need me to pick them up, I can. Just let me know. I can get off work early.”

He chews on his bottom lip for a moment. The fingers of his right hand sting under the hot water from where he’s bitten them down, but it doesn’t quite register. It’s been one of those terrible distant days for him, where everything seems muffled and unreal. His doctor said to focus on physical sensations when he’s all spaced out. He’s not sure it helps. “I think I can manage,” he says. “Rose likes ‘im, you like ‘im -- he can’t be that bad, right?”

Emma exhales sharply through her nose, a little bit like a laugh. “I guess so. Thanks, Ethan. He’s pretty quiet, if that’s any comfort.”

Ethan nods to himself instead of answering.

It isn’t until Thursday morning that he starts to worry. It’s been a rough week, if he’s being honest, which most of the time he isn’t, much to the chagrin of every professional ever tasked to him. The nightmares have been back after a few months’ respite, and as per usual they’re half battles he’s fought, half battles he doesn’t recognize but which seem familiar, fighting and bleeding in two different types of desert. He gets nervy when he hasn’t slept well, jumps at every little thing, and when he’s jumpy he ends up jonesing sooner or later. And besides, Ethan’s not good at talking to people he’s just met -- used to be, isn’t anymore. He worries obsessively through ‘til the afternoon. When he realizes he’s spent most of the day pacing in his room, he forces himself to call Sam, who picks up on the second ring and talks him down.

That night he sleeps a little better. Friday goes by quickly. He gets work done. It’s 5:30 when he leaves the house for the first time in three days, and even then it’s almost like he doesn’t leave the house. He lives above the garage; all he’s gotta do is go downstairs and he can go straight into the garage without going outside. He’s only outside in his car, and his car feels safe. But, like every doctor’s said, small victories.

Dread is not an unfamiliar feeling for Ethan Goodnight St. John, but this kinda anticipatory low-stakes dread annoys him maybe more than all the other different kinds of dread. He’s parked close to the building but close enough he can see the blue double-doors swing open, and sure ‘nough it’s Rose bounding through ‘em. Ethan bites at his thumbnail. This isn’t too much of a deviation from his and Rose’s normal late-afternoon routine. He picks her up, and then they drive home together, and Emma has usually gotten back from the office by then and is in the middle of making dinner. There’s just Coach Park coming this time. He realizes too late he shoulda asked Emma what the man’s first name was. Too late, he thinks in a slight panic as they get closer. He fumbles to unlock the doors, then remembers since he’s probably gonna be shaking this man’s hand he maybe oughta not be biting at his thumb, and he hastily wipes his hands on his corduroys.

Once Emma and her coach get close enough he can make out her coach’s face, Ethan feels like all the air’s gone out from his lungs. He could swear he’s met this Coach Park before, and usually when he gets that feeling it’s ‘cause he recognizes some stranger from one AA meeting they dropped in on, but this feels different. It feels, if he’s being honest, a lot like bolting up in the middle of the night from one of his weird mixed-up nightmares and trying to remember what’s real and what’s not.

Rose throws open the back door and shoves her gym bag and backpack in at the same time that her coach opens the passenger side door. Ethan sees him in profile first. God, I know this man from somewhere, he thinks. Then he thinks, oh, no, this is a fine-looking man sitting next to me.

The coach reaches over his hand and says, “You must be Uncle Ethan. I’m Billy Park.”

They shake. Billy’s hands are warm. “Uh, I am Ethan indeed. If I wasn’t, I’d hope Rose’d be smart enough not to just hop in the car like that.”

“Oh my God,” Rose says.

Billy chuckles, though, before twisting back around to buckle himself in. “Rose has gotten better about looking before she jumps,” he says loftily.

“I swear to God if you two gang up on me,” Rose says.

Ethan feels himself grinning and glances up at the rearview mirror to look at her in the back seat. He can’t believe she’s 14 already, at least until she opens her mouth. Then he can believe it. The drive back home is mostly quiet, but Ethan’s relieved to notice himself calmed and steady. Billy mostly looks out the window. Rose doesn’t look up from her phone once.

When they pull into the garage, Rose is the first one bolting out of the car, as per usual. Ethan chuckles a little at the way Billy rolls his eyes. “I thought you were supposed to tire her out,” Ethan says.

“Teenagers are like that,” Billy says, shrugging. “Half the time they’re forced to take time off, it’s because they got injured tripping up the stairs.”

“Yeah,” Ethan says.

He lets Billy walk into the house first and makes sure to lock the garage behind them both. He checks that it’s locked three times. When he turns to walk into the kitchen, Billy’s still standing there with him in the entryway, staring at him, leather bag slung over his shoulder. Ethan stares back. The moment’s only broken when Emma yells from the kitchen, “Billy, I hope you like spaghetti!”

“You know it,” Billy says, still staring at Ethan. He turns around and squints at the hallway.

“Uh, your first left down that-a-way,” Ethan says.

Billy doesn’t look back at him. Ethan can’t look away from the way Billy walks. Of course it’s hardly surprising that an elite gymnastics coach moves with grace and control, but Billy -- Billy is something else entirely. 

He knows this man from somewhere. He’s sure of it. By the looks of things, Billy knows him, too.

Ethan waits for a long moment to catch his breath and then follows Billy to the kitchen.

He leans in the doorway watching for a moment. Billy’s looking around, and Ethan sees his eyes rest on the picture on the wall of all of them six years ago: Ethan and Matt in their army fatigues, looking exhausted but proud, Rose and Emma. Billy glances back at Ethan, maybe processing the fact he'd been deployed alongside Matt, but there’s no judgement, no curiosity, just something like acknowledgement. 

“I wasn’t sure what to bring as a hostess gift,” Billy says, pulling something out of his bag, “so I hope you like coffee.”

“Oh, you didn’t have to; that’s delightful. Thank you,” Emma says.

Billy asks if there’s anything he can do to help. Emma says no, if she needs help she’ll make Rose earn her keep for once. Billy chuckles. Ethan silently sets the table in the attached dining room, vaguely aware Emma must have told Billy not to bring alcohol, wondering if Billy’s guessed who the dry alcoholic is. Probably not hard, he thinks, smoothing out the napkins. He’s nervous again.

Rose and Emma and Billy talk about school, about whether Billy likes Boston better than Baton Rouge, about Rose’s math teacher. Ethan speaks when asked questions, gets a big laugh out of the whole table mentioning the circumstances surrounding his failing 10th grade math. The food tastes good, either better than usual or maybe Ethan’s just not spaced out for once, fully in his body, feeling more than usual. Who knows.

After they’ve mostly finished eating, Ethan the last one mopping up sauce with bread crust, Rose takes their plates and excuses herself, claiming to have homework. Ethan’s nearly certain that’s not the case, but when he was her age the last thing he wanted to do was be around adults, too. Can’t blame her. Emma asks if either of them wants coffee, and they both say yes.

While she’s in the kitchen, it’s just him and Billy sat at the too big dining table, both warily staring at each other. It’s Billy who breaks the silence, saying, “So what keeps you busy?”

“Uh, I’m a freelancer,” he says, “technically speaking, I guess. Do some writing and computer work, uh, but from home. Nothing fancy, I mean, but it beats havin’ to reckon with Boston traffic twice a day or more. I got no clue how Emma does it.”

“After Seoul traffic, nothing impresses me, to be honest,” Billy says.

“What, even how it gets when it snows here? You’d think we’d all know how to deal with it by now, but every winter it’s like half the city’s never seen a snowflake before. And I’m sayin’ this as a Louisiana transplant, so you know it’s real bad if even I think all these other folks ain’t got a clue.”

“You’re from Louisiana,” Billy says.

“Yessir.”

“That was the first place I lived in America,” Billy says. “University there hired me away. Strange place to live.”

“Hot,” Ethan says.

“Unbelievably,” Billy says. His eyes crinkle up at the corners. “Cold here, though, in the winter.”

“You mind it?” Ethan asks. “How long you been here? It’s gettin’ cold real soon, you know that.”

“Just a year, so just one winter. Wasn’t so bad, though.”

“Once you figure out how best to stay warm, it really ain’t so bad,” Ethan drawls. He’s not sure where this sudden confidence is coming from, but he’s rewarded with Billy looking away from him real fast like he’s just been caught doing something he didn’t want seen. There’s a spark of heat in Ethan’s gut.

“Oh, and they teach you in Louisiana how to stay warm?”

“Hey, I never said I was a quick learner,” Ethan protests, grinning lazily, leaning forward. “Took me awhile. But I managed eventually.”

“How long you lived here?”

Ethan mentally translates the question as, how long since deployment? How long since coming home with your body full of bullets, but not as full as Matt’s, doped up on morphine and alcohol your friends smuggled in? “Five years here,” he says, “but a year in DC before that.”

Billy nods, brow furrowed.

That’s when Emma returns with their coffee, and after that, the conversation flows so smoothly that Ethan barely needs to think. They’re only interrupted by Rose appearing, changed into a sweatshirt and pajama pants.

“I’m headed to bed,” she says. “Came down to say goodnight. Glad you’re all getting along without me.”

Billy laughs; Ethan snickers into the last of his coffee.

Rose kisses Emma on the forehead, murmurs, “G’night, Mom,” then waves at Ethan and Billy -- “Goodnight, Coach Park, goodnight, Goodnight.”

Ethan grins back like he always does. “G’night, Rose. You sleep well.”

After the sound of her footsteps on the stairs fades, Billy’s voice, amused: “Why’d she say goodnight twice to you?”

Emma laughs while Ethan rubs his eyes, suddenly a little flustered. “His middle name’s Goodnight,” she says. “That’s how Rose’s always said goodnight to him ‘cause she thought it was so funny when she was a little girl.”

“She used to laugh so hard she’d rile herself up again and we’d have to take another half-hour of readin’ to her to get her asleep,” Ethan says mournfully, and Emma laughs again.

“Your middle name is Goodnight,” Billy repeats.

“This poor man’s full name is Ethan Goodnight St. John,” Emma says fondly. “And his brother was Matthew Praise-God St. John. Praise-God was hyphenated.”

“I’m...glad you decided on something more traditional for Rose,” Billy says.

“I maintain that Rose Creek St. John makes her sound real like an heiress,” Ethan says.

Emma laughs. “That’s not as bad as what your parents wanted originally.”

“Don’t remind me,” Ethan says faintly.

“They wanted Mary Love-of-God St. John,” Emma says. “That’s worse, right? That’s worse.”

“That’s worse,” Billy says, sounding lost, and both Ethan and Emma double over laughing.

“Puritan blood,” Ethan says mournfully. “Real easy to see on a family tree.”

“Does anyone want more coffee?” Emma asks.

Ethan shakes his head. Billy says, “No thank you. I should probably be leaving, got an early class tomorrow.”

“Goodness, it’s late, isn’t it?” Emma says. “I’ll call you a cab if you’d like.”

Billy glances at Ethan but turns away fast. “That would be kind of you,” he says.

For a brief moment, Ethan’s disappointed, but then again, he’s not sure what he’d do if he was alone with Billy for twenty minutes. He kinda has a feeling his heart might burst, and he doesn’t know why. They all wait on the front porch together for the cab to arrive, and Billy shakes hands with both of them to say goodbye.

Watching the red taillights fade, Emma says, quietly, “That was nice.”

“Yeah,” Ethan says. “Real easy to talk to.”

The night air’s a little cold, a portent of winter, and Ethan smiles to himself. Maybe the new paroxetine dose is really working. He’s not sure, but he’s hopeful for some reason, sitting outside without his agoraphobia slipping in, without the fear of enemy snipers, without the terror.

“You seemed well,” Emma says.

“I felt well,” Ethan says. “Huh. Imagine that, why don’t you?”

He can only manage a few more minutes without getting nervous. Right before he falls asleep, though, he realizes: I’ve dreamt about that man before. I dream about that man every night. He rolls onto his side to curl up against himself and wonders, not for the first time, if he’s going crazy.


	2. Owl

Ethan dreams every night that weekend of owls. They’re not exactly peaceful dreams; they’re too vivid for that. But they’re not nightmares, either. He dreams of sitting on the edge of a campfire, surrounded by desert, sky bright without the competition of electric light, watching someone sleep, someone familiar. Then he dreams he’s walking through a forest alone, and there’s an owl that cries out every few minutes. It’s reassuring. Then he’s back at the campfire, which has burned itself low, and an owl swoops over the embers, but Ethan doesn’t start. He just watches. In the dream, he knows the owl’s just caught a snake, but he doesn’t see it.

Monday morning he wakes to his alarm at 6:30, dry-mouthed and disoriented. Just like every morning, his feet are on the floor before he quite realizes it. His room is cold. He automatically turns his alarm off and makes his bed without thinking. He turns on the lamp on his nightstand and dry swallows his medication. Half the medication he’s ever taken has been meant to be taken with food, but he’s never paid attention to that. He goes through his morning routine the same way as always, real careful not to think too hard about anything. Learned the hard way over the past couple years that paying too much attention to his dreams never ends well. Push-ups, sit-ups, split-leg squats, vague memories of deployment, vague memories of something else. He’s out of the shower before Rose’s alarm goes off, dressed and downstairs drinking coffee before Emma makes it down.

There’s three routes Ethan knows by heart and feels safe on: the house to Rose’s gymnastics school and back, the house to Dr. Q’s and back, the house to AA and back. He always leaves for the gymnastics school at 5:30pm. They are back before 6:30pm. He does this four times a week: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. Rose has Wednesdays off and either takes the bus home or goes home with a friend and gets a ride with them later, before dinner. He drives to Dr. Q’s office every other Monday, always leaving before 7:30. He is always back by 9:00am, when Rose and Emma have both already left. He only goes to AA every once and awhile now. For three years it was every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, leaving at exactly 6:30pm, arriving a little early at the Methodist church, and leaving at exactly 8:00pm, even if that meant leaving early. Now he goes once a month, maybe, twice if it’s a bad month. It’s been two years since his relapse. He feels okay most of the time, not going, but tries not to be complacent. Still carries his bronze two-year coin in his wallet and everything.

This morning, he is going to Dr. Q’s. Dr. Q’s office opens right at 8:00 in the morning, and he is always there before the receptionist unlocks the doors. He notices, starting up the car, that the car’s tank is full, meaning Emma must have swung it by the gas station to top up without Ethan asking, which was nice of her, even if it makes him flinch thinking about how he can’t even fill up without help. Tries not to think too hard about it. The sun’s already risen, but the streets are mostly empty except for joggers and dog-walkers and mailmen. Ethan always drives without the radio on. A few years ago he’d had the radio on and a news story played the sound of a gunshot and he flashed back hard and drove off the road. No one around, no damage done, but it’d taken him a week to get behind the wheel again.

He pulls into the parking lot and, as always, waits in his car until the receptionist turns the lights on in the front office. The receptionist waves him past the sign-in sheet, per usual.

Just like always, Dr. Q is waiting in his office, sitting in his chair, waiting with his clipboard and a cup of coffee. “Morning, Ethan,” he says warmly, and just like always, Ethan, a little less warmly, says “Mornin’, doc,” right back.

Today, he flops onto the couch and looks up to the ceiling. He and Dr. Q are long past the idle small talk that Ethan used to try and burn up time with -- comments on the weather, Rose’s grades, books Ethan’s been reading. “Think the meds are workin’,” he says.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Past few days been a lot better. Been managin’ to sit on the porch the past few nights for a bit, and Rose’s coach came over for dinner one night and I didn’t…” Ethan gestures with one hand, searching for words. “Didn’t have to go hide somewhere,” he says. “Did just fine the whole night.”

“That’s good to hear,” Dr. Q says, voice carefully neutral. The whole reason Ethan and Dr. Q get on is because Dr. Q figured out fast that Ethan does better with neutral praise than anything that sounds genuinely proud or impressed -- he finds it condescending, or it edges on his pride, something like that.

“This stuff, though, paroxetine, uh, does it happen to maybe make dreams a little more vivid? Been havin’ more nightmares.”

“How bad are the nightmares?”

“Not like, you know, a couple years ago,” he says. He smooths his palms on his pants, carefully refusing to dwell on the unhelpful memories his brain immediately rustles up. “No wakin’ up screamin’ or anything.”

“Nightmares are more traditionally considered a paroxetine withdrawal symptom,” Dr. Q says.

“Hmm,” Ethan says.

“You’ve previously been pretty resistant to trying Prazosin.”

“That’s the one you gotta take three times a day, right?”

 

“Yes.”

Ethan shakes his head. “Too much trouble,” he says. “And they ain’t that bad right now. Who knows, maybe they’ll just go away again.”

“Of course,” Dr. Q says. “But if they do worsen, that does remain an option.”

“Yeah, ‘course.”

Quiet for a moment. Dr. Q likes letting him squirm sometimes, which Ethan doesn’t really like that much, but in his years and years of doctor after doctor, this is the only one that he’s even vaguely gotten along with, so Ethan waits uncomfortably.

“You didn’t like Xanax,” Dr. Q says abruptly.

“No, I didn’t,” Ethan says. “Too much like drinkin’. Too easy to go down that road again.”

Dr. Q nods and squints, then takes a contemplative sip of coffee. “If you’re going to start pushing yourself to leave the house more, I think it would make sense to have something you can take either to prevent yourself from having a panic attack or that you can take when you feel one coming on. Fear is self-reinforcing. If you try to do something new and it backfires, it’ll be much harder to try and do that thing again. You’re doing well these days, Ethan, and I think being comfortable in new places isn’t far off for you.”

Ethan grits his teeth and stares at the carpet between Dr. Q’s feet. It’s a new angle on a conversation they’ve had dozens of times: Why don’t you want to get back into the world? Why don’t you want that? It would bother Ethan less, this conversation, if he knew why. But he doesn’t, so he just stares as a familiar of distance starts to settle in. Everything feels muzzy. His tongue feels thick.

“I’d like to prescribe you a beta-blocker and a sedative called Ativan. Ativan is a benzodiazepine, which means it can be addictive, but I’m prescribing you half a milligram. You can take the beta-blocker preventatively, drive on it, whatever. Basically it keeps adrenaline from affecting your body so much, so you’re less likely to start the cortisol fight-or-flight spiral. Ativan, you take exactly one if you feel yourself starting to have an attack, and it should stop it. You only need one, and as long as you only take one, you should be fine, but we can check in at your next appointment.” Dr. Q’s voice is steady. Ethan hates it. “Also, I’m only prescribing you ten of them.”

“Okay,” Ethan says, surprising himself. Dr. Q waits to see if he’ll say anything more. Ethan prods at his cheek with his tongue. “I just don’t wanna relapse.” He’s not really meaning to talk, feels like he’s watching himself from a distance, hearing the words after they come out of his mouth. “With the Xanax it was real easy to just take one whenever I felt out of it, and then I’d feel even more of out it, but I just wouldn’t mind. And that’s the exact same thing I did with drinkin’, and I’m far from keen to start drinkin’ again. That make sense?”

“Yes, and it’s a good thing to be cautious about,” Dr. Q says. “The Ativan shouldn’t affect you that way. In fact, you shouldn’t feel it at all except for it stopping a panic attack.”

“Okay,” Ethan says. “Okay, that sounds good.”

“Your challenge for our next appointment, if you feel up to it, is to go someplace new. Get someone you trust to take you -- Emma would be fine…” Dr. Q’s voice trails off while he scribbles something on the pad. “Go somewhere quiet. Doesn’t have to be far. Take the beta-blocker beforehand.”

Ethan thinks back with no small amount of irritation to the last doctor he’d had who tried exposure therapy on him. Hated that doctor. He thinks of Rose, though, and her school meets he’s never been to, of Emma going to the gas station for him. “Okay,” he says again.

He’s tense the whole drive back home, but the house is empty when he gets there, which means he can pace the first floor til his heart slows down. He texts Emma to say he’s got prescriptions he’ll need filled but it’s no rush. He does the dishes left over from breakfast, cleans the living room, gets a text back from Emma saying that’s no problem.

He leaves at 5:30 to pick up Rose. Traffic is worse than usual. She’s sitting on the curb by the time he gets there, looking exhausted. She throws her gear in the back seat, then hops into the passenger seat. “I hate Coach Park,” she says dramatically, “who says hello, by the way.”

“Ah,” Ethan says, waiting for her to buckle in.

“Also, he told me to tell you that you looked really familiar and asked if you’d ever been to Korea, but I told him you hadn’t. What are we having for dinner tonight?”

“I’m not sure,” Ethan says, staring warily at the gym. He wonders where Billy is, what he’s doing. “I have, to my knowledge, never been to Korea.”

“And you’d think you’d remember that,” Rose says.

“You’d think,” Ethan says, and then they head home.

That night--

_Goodnight is staring down the barrel of his rifle. His hands are shaking. A voice in his ear -- “Take the shot.” Louder -- “Take the shot!” And --_

_There’s no time to think on the battlefield. That’s not what Goodnight’s job is, to think; his job is to execute. He does what he’s been trained to. He keeps his rifle steady. Keeps his mind carefully blank. There’s things you gotta ignore -- the smoke, the stench of death, the way bodies pile on top of each other and writhe ‘cause they’re not all dead, no, just the lucky ones are dead. He’s good at ignoring things. He’s good at focusing. He --_

_\-- “Goody,” someone is saying in his ear. He realizes he’s shaking and sweating and gasping, sitting up, braced against the wall of a rented room. He squeezes his eyes shut and bites his palm, then tries to stand. Billy’s there with an arm under his shoulders fast as he can kill a man. Goodnight’s knees buckle underneath him, but Billy’s strong enough to keep him from toppling over. He helps Goodnight sit at the edge of his bed, smooths his hair down, murmurs something that Goodnight doesn’t quite hear. Goodnight is grabbing the sheets so tight his hands hurt. Billy sits down next to him and lights a cigarette and smokes next to him in silence for a few minutes, their shoulders touching._

_“Bad one,” Goodnight manages to say._

_Billy pulls him close with one arm and Goodnight crumples, resting his head on Billy’s chest. “I know,” Billy says, evenly and without humor. No mockery. Goodnight’s hands are buried in the fabric of Billy’s shirt, and he’s trying to stop panting like a lathered horse. After a few minutes, Billy hands him the cigarette. And he breathes in --_

_The retreat from Antietam is bloody and confused, and Goodnight is so tired he can barely think straight. Everything he’d been blocking out is flooding in: the men he’d known who he’d seen drop, the men he hadn’t known who he’d seen drop ‘cause he killed them, the screaming… He keeps his head down and puts one foot in front of the other, following his regiment, ignoring the man to his left who’s prattling on about how Goodnight shot like the Angel of Death was by his side. The white gibbous moon is waxing and heavy, and he thinks suddenly of how white the faces of the dying are, and then there’s the screech of an owl right when the man to his left slaps his shoulder, and--_

_The taste of opium on his tongue, the way his body slowly eases, Billy murmuring against his hair. Goodnight finishes the cigarette and tries not to think. Billy kisses him on the temple and--_

Ethan wakes up and lunges for his gun. It takes him a moment to realize the gun he’d been lunging for wasn’t, you know, his gun, locked in a safe under the bed, no; Ethan’d been lunging for a Whitworth rifle he’d expected to be right beside him.

“Goddamn,” he says to himself. “Goddamn.”

He needs to see Billy again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading - more Billy from here on out, I promise :')


	3. backward I see in my own days

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much for reading/commenting/leaving kudos :^) longer chapter this time!
> 
> chapter title from whitman

Tuesday he picks Rose up, and she complains about her history teacher. Wednesday she gets a ride home with a friend, but Ethan skips dinner with her and Emma to go to AA more out of restlessness than anything else. He forces himself to stay for the entire meeting rather than cutting out early. Afterwards, he walks two blocks to a gas station. He buys a cup of coffee with cash and carries it back to his car and pours it out on the asphalt. It takes a few minutes for him to calm down enough to drive home.

It’s not so bad, and it’s not so hard. There is absolutely no sense of victory. Ethan feels like a cave has opened up inside him. He lies in bed and stares at the ceiling for hours. He dreams of drinking. He asks Emma if she can pick up Rose that Thursday and then Friday as well. Sometimes when he holds still enough, lying in bed, it’s like he can’t feel anything at all.

Friday night he goes back to AA. Sam is there. They don’t talk much, but Sam offers him a cigarette after the meeting lets out. They stand in the parking lot of the Methodist church and smoke in silence. Sam claps his shoulder and walks away instead of saying goodbye. Ethan walks down to the gas station again. There is a different attendant working. He buys a cup of coffee with cash. Decaf, two sugars. He drinks it when he gets back to the car. He texts Sam to say thank you. He wishes he had Billy’s number. He sleeps easy.

At his next appointment with Dr. Q, they both agree that the paroxetine is helping. “You’ve gone from panic attacks once or twice a week to two weeks without having one at all,” Dr. Q says. Then, drily, “That’s good.”

Ethan winces to himself, staring at the window. There’s little slivers of washed-out blue visible between the white slats of the blinds. “I know, and I’m glad, I suppose, but at the same time I can’t really say it feels much different than before,” he says. He runs his tongue over his bottom teeth. “It’s a strange thing, though, watchin’ yourself change or go through the motions of changin’, bein’ able to see it but not feelin’ it. Half the time I feel like I’m dreamin’.”

Dr. Q tells him not to get too concerned with how he thinks he should feel. He says however Ethan feels is just how he feels; that’s that. Ethan isn’t really listening. He’s thinking about how, if he were to be honest, he would have to say that it’s not that he feels like he’s dreaming when he’s awake, no, the problem is that when he’s dreaming, he’s another person. And when he dreams he’s that person, this man who’s hard-drinking,half the time a crack shot and half the time afraid to touch a gun, that’s when he feels real. That’s the kinda feeling he misses when he’s awake. He doesn’t say that, though.

When he picks up Rose that afternoon, she asks him a whole onslaught of polite questions: what he thinks of the weather, if he thinks going as a black cat for Halloween is cliche, if she should be a history major once she goes to college. It kinda breaks Ethan’s heart how good she and Emma are at reading him, how good they are at stepping around him when he’s not doing well. He teases her about being ready to leave home for university already. She acts outraged. Things, he thinks, triple-checking that the garage door is locked behind them, are better than they could be. They are better than they were.

That evening he and Emma drive down to the gas station, and Ethan tops up his car. He leans on the driver’s side door, arms crossed tight across his chest, fighting the urge to throw himself down onto the pavement and use his station wagon as a shield between him and the building behind him. Emma is still in the passenger seat, scrolling through her Blackberry like what they’re doing is normal. Which it is. Not for him. For other people.

Even if it doesn’t feel like a victory, it doesn’t feel like a loss, either. When he gets home he takes an Ativan and falls asleep still dressed. He can’t remember what he dreamt about, but when he wakes, he feels cozy and overwhelmingly alone all at once. Emma texts him to ask if it’s okay if she invites Billy over for dinner again on Friday. Ethan forces himself to wait a full seven minutes before replying that would be fine with him.

Thursday night he sleeps unevenly, shifting from shallow sleep to dreams too vivid to be restful. Gets an email from a client about a database issue and spends a few hours listlessly turning over the problem in his head before getting agitated and cleaning the kitchen for the third time that week. He naps in the late afternoon, sprawled across the sofa in the living room, and wakes up just in time to splash his face with cold water and smooth down his hair before leaving. His hair is getting longer than he usually keeps it, and he during the drive that he oughta cut it soon.

Waiting in the parking lot, he tries to keep his head empty. He used to worry a whole lot about dressing sharp, keeping his hair short, but after he got discharged, it was as much a shield as the drinking was. You’re wearing a tailored suit, people hesitate a little before cutting you off at the bar. Watching Rose burst outta the gym doors with Billy following, he wonders sickly if wearing the same gray sweater most of the time is just the same thing: a sleight of hand meant to keep anyone from looking at him too long. Goddamn, he thinks, trying not to look too hard at the hard outlines of Billy’s silhouette, please look at me, I cannot imagine anything worse than you not looking at me. And then, as they get closer, Billy looks up from his feet and grins when he sees Ethan and waves, and Ethan revises his silent prayer: goddamn, do not look at me, I cannot imagine anything worse than you looking at me.

By the time Billy’s buckled in next to him and Rose is settled in the back seat, though, something in Ethan has settled into place. He nods when Billy says hello, kind of smiles, and idly listens to Rose and Billy discuss something related to muscle imbalances that he doesn’t understand at all. Traffic’s bad; of course it is. At stoplights, Ethan watches Billy out of the corner of his eye. He can’t figure out if Billy’s younger than him or just aged better, maybe seen less sun and sand and alcohol. His hair is longer than Ethan’s, most of it pulled back into a knot at the back of his neck, some of it hanging loose and framing his face. He’s wearing a long-sleeved shirt, but it doesn’t particularly hide the solidness of his arms.

Rose is bounding out of the car before the garage door is even closed behind them, claiming a dire need to shower after her “deeply sadistic workout,” which Billy chuckles at. Ethan sighs fondly when she doesn’t quite manage to shut the door after herself. Always rushing. Billy follows him inside in silence, then waits for him to triple-check the door into the garage is locked. They walk into the kitchen together, and Ethan takes over for Emma where she’s been washing lettuce so she can greet Billy. Ethan listens to them talk about Rose and keeps finding himself grinning at the salad greens. It’s just a nice evening, he thinks. Getting colder. He likes winter. Good company.

They eat. Rose interrogates Billy about his time on the South Korean national team, which Ethan gathers is something Billy doesn’t talk about much, but he doesn’t seem flustered, just bored by talking about his own accomplishments. Nearly making it to the Olympics, then coaching in Korea for a few years before Baton Rouge. Ethan’s not sure how much time Billy must’ve spent there, but it must’ve been at least a few years.

“So why’d you move to America?” Ethan asks him, kind of surprising himself. He’s been quiet, content to let Rose try and drag the biographical details out of him, but he feels rewarded by the way Billy’s face goes soft and thoughtful.

“Well, there were a lot of reasons,” Billy says. “Coaching for the national team was stressful. My English was good, and I had more connections here than Australia, and there were coaching jobs here. Put the word out and got offers from Louisiana and Texas just days later. Seemed right.”

“Huh,” Ethan says.

Billy’s eyes crinkle up. “Plus,” he says, “I was young then. And I am told many people want to get as far away from their family as possible.”

Rose, to his left, groans and says something about looking into college in Australia. Ethan laughs hard enough he sinks his face into his hands. When he looks up, Billy is grinning back at him from across the table, looking pleased with himself. Ethan feels the strangest phantom urge to knock their knees together, to lean into Billy’s shoulder, but it’s a feeling like he’s done that a million times before, like it’s the most normal thing.

Emma tells Rose she’ll be paying for the plane tickets.

After Rose has wandered off to watch TV in the living room, Billy insists on helping Ethan with the dishes. Emma tries to take over for them, but Ethan flicks his hand dismissively and says it’s time for the men to do something useful for once, which she laughs at. When Billy pushes his sleeves up, Ethan tries hard not to stare too long at his forearms. Well, he tries hard to not get caught. There’s something tattooed on the inside of Billy’s left arm, just under the joint of his elbow, but Ethan can’t tell what.

After they’re done, the three adults standing around the kitchen with cups of coffee, Billy rolls down his sleeves, and Ethan thinks he can it’s a fleur-de-lis. He doesn’t know why, but it makes him dizzy to see it. He leans back on the counter to steady himself, and it’s just a few seconds before the feeling passes. 

“I should head out, let you get to bed,” Billy is telling Emma. “Class tomorrow.”

“Oh, of course,” Emma says. “I can call--”

“I can drive you back,” Ethan interrupts. “If you’d like, that is. Where d’you live?”

“That would be great,” Billy says. “Not far. Little bit off the orange line Forest Hill stop, if you know where that is.”

“More or less,” Ethan says. “Might need directions.”

“Not a problem,” Billy says, then leaves to go say goodbye to Rose.

Emma keeps curiously looking at Ethan. Ethan steadfastly ignores her.

“So, uh, you takin’ a class tomorrow? Teachin’ one?” Ethan asks, once they’re both in the car, waiting for the garage door to finish swinging open.

“Teaching,” Billy says. “Or assistant teaching, I guess. It’s a self-defense class.”

Ethan’s careful backing out. Normally he braces one hand on the back of the passenger seat to turn around and check behind him, but the thought of accidentally touching Billy’s hair is a little much for him. Once he’s pulled out onto the street, Billy gives him directions on which way to go. Ethan bites on the side of his tongue to keep himself from listing a dozen questions, but it’s not a minute of silence before Billy says, real casual, “You spent much time in Baton Rouge?”

“Naw,” he says. “My folks are from more up north. Only been once or twice.”

“Recently?”

“Just as a kid.” He bites the inside of his cheek, wondering how much is appropriate to say, but there’s something tense about the way Billy is asking. “Which is the strangest thing,” he says, “because I could swear I’d met you before all this.”

Ethan thinks he should feel nervous after admitting that, but even out of the corner of his eye he can see Billy relax. “Thank God you said that,” Billy says. “I’m sure we’ve met before. I don’t know where, but I’m sure of it.”

“It’s been botherin’ me for weeks,” Ethan says. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever been to AA, though I suppose I’m kinda defeatin’ the purpose of the institution askin’ a question like that and all.”

“No,” Billy says. “Do you go to a gym here?”

“I have barely dragged myself outta the house for the last couple years,” Ethan admits in a rush. He thinks Billy might be staring at him from the passenger seat, but he’s focusing hard on the road to try and keep his courage. “Been in my share of hospitals and bars and back alleys before that, but even if that was where I’d met you, I’m guessin’ I wouldn’t remember it anyways.”

“Hmm,” Billy says.

Ethan thinks, with a wave of relief, that it’s not a judgemental or surprised or pitying kinda noise, just an acknowledgement. “Unrelated question.”

“Shoot,” Billy says.

“You get that tattoo done in Baton Rouge? That’s a fleur-de-lis, no?”

Ethan had expected the question to lighten the tension in the air, but Billy sighs. “You’d think,” Billy says. “Usually when people ask, that’s what I tell them.”

“You don’t gotta tell me, I didn’t think it was…” 

“You’ll turn left not at this light but the next one.”

“Okay,” Ethan says. He glances over at Billy, who looks so gorgeous lit up by streetlights that Ethan can’t hardly stand it.

“I started having this recurring nightmare when I was maybe 15,” Billy says. He sounds uncertain. “Well, I call it a nightmare, but I don’t know that that’s what it was. When I describe it, other people tell me it sounds like a nightmare, but that wasn’t what it felt like.”

Ethan turns left. Billy doesn’t talk again until he tells him to take a right. They’re cutting through a residential neighborhood now, sleepy and quiet. After a few more minutes, a few more turns, Billy says, “Right here on the left.”

There’s a car in the driveway, so Ethan pulls up next to the curb. He wants badly to ask if that’s Billy’s car or someone else’s car, if Billy takes the train just because or if he’s got someone living with him, and who is it living with him, a roommate, a friend, a partner? He waits for Billy to get out, but the other man doesn’t move. Ethan shifts the car into park and turns it off.

He turns to look at Billy, trying to figure out what to do, what to say. Billy is slumped against the passenger window, kinda staring at nothing. “In this dream,” Billy says, and then he turns to glance at Ethan. There aren’t street lights, so his expression is hard to read. “In this dream, I’m in a bell tower, I think. I’m dying. Someone’s shot me, and I’m bleeding out and can’t get up.”

He pauses, still looking at Ethan. Ethan waits. Billy looks away.

“At first, I’m panicking and everything hurts. But then I manage to turn my head a little bit, and I see this symbol on something -- sometimes I’d see it floating in the air, sometimes burned into the wood, sometimes on a flask. And for some reason it makes me feel better. I’m still dying, but it doesn’t hurt anymore. Then I’d wake up.” He sighs and unbuckles his seatbelt. “Thing was, it’s not like the fleur-de-lis is as common in Korea as it is here. I didn’t realize it was something in particular. I would draw it on things sometimes, and it wasn’t until one of my teammates mentioned it that I realized it had a name. I got it tattooed as soon as I could. That’s harder to do there. Illegal, technically. But there are people who do it. And the day I got it tattooed, that was the last time I had that dream.”

“Damn,” Ethan says.

Billy seems to shrug. “It’s a good story,” he says, “not that I usually tell it. Are you tattooed?”

“Nah,” Ethan says, staring at what few stars are visible. “Thought about gettin’ a couple lines of Whitman when I was younger, but I never went through with it. Maybe for the best, though. Probably woulda got a bullet through it anyway at some point.”

“Whitman,” Billy repeats.

Ethan grins self-consciously, not that Billy can see it. “‘Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with linguists and contenders,’” he quotes. “‘I have no mockings or arguments. I witness and wait.’” He laughs to himself. “Woulda been a long tattoo, probably. Take up too much skin. Dunno why I always liked that bit so much, but it’s my favorite.”

Billy drums his fingers against the door. “Ethan,” he says, “did you ever -- I know your middle name is Goodnight. Did anybody call you Goody growing up?”

“I’ll be damned. How the hell did you know that?”

This time when he looks at Billy, he can definitely make out the other man’s expression: confusion and worry and surprise. “I don’t know,” Billy says. “When you came to pick up Rose, my first thought was that can’t be Ethan, that man’s name is Goody.”

Ethan whistles to himself. “Goddamn,” he says. “This is -- this is real strange.”

“Yeah,” Billy says. Silence. “I should get some sleep.”

“Yeah,” Ethan says.

Billy doesn’t move. Then he pulls out his phone and hands it to Ethan. Ethan enters his number and calls to make sure his phone goes off in his pocket, hangs up, then wordlessly hands it back to Billy. Their fingertips just barely touch.

“You be able to figure out how to get back?” Billy asks.

“Yeah,” Ethan says. “I’m good with directions.”

Billy finally opens the door and gets out. He stands there for a moment with the car door open, then ducks his head in. He starts to say something and then reconsiders it.

Ethan leans his head to the side. “You know, it’s an awful pity I can’t figure out where I know you from,” he drawls, “seein’ how much I’m enjoyin’ knowin’ you now.”

Billy’s grin is visible even in the dark. “Couldn’t have said it better myself,” he says. 

Ethan watches him go inside and waits for the lights in the front room to go on before driving back home. He’d wanted to ask, what do you dream about now? Do you dream about me sometimes? But he can’t stop thinking about Billy’s nightmare, or recurring death dream, whatever he wanted to call it. He tries to distract himself by rolling the windows down, then, once he’s home, by thumbing through his Whitman anthology. Nothing works, and he’s dreading dreaming.

But he sleeps easy that night and doesn’t remember anything on waking.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahhh thank you for the kind comments; i haven't responded to all of them yet but i will soon!!
> 
> i'm on tumblr at twentyeightghosts if you wanna come say hi!

It starts raining Saturday morning, and the paper says it’ll stay raining til Wednesday at least. Ethan makes a pot of coffee even though Emma isn’t up and he won’t finish it by himself; Emma’s usually up shortly after him, he figures. He sits on the porch with Friday’s crossword and a pencil, watching the world get a little lighter even though the cloud cover means everything stays gray and murky. Something is bothering at him, though he doesn’t know what. It’s something his mind flinches around, something he can’t quite think directly about.

Eventually -- maybe an hour later, though he’s not sure -- Emma comes out to join him, wrapped up in her bathrobe, holding two cups of coffee, one for her and a second for Ethan.

“Oh,” he says. “Thank you.”

She sits down in the rocking chair next to him. “I’m glad you and Billy get along.”

Ethan leans back with his coffee, tempering a little flare of defensiveness. Of course he and Billy get along, he thinks, but there’s not really any reason anybody shoulda assumed that. But her tone of voice makes him feel childish, like he’s been shooed outta the parlor to go play with the only other boy his age at a dinner party. Then again, Billy is the maybe the first person beside his doctor he’s had any kinda personal conversation with in...what, years? He doesn’t even talk with Sam like he used to, not after that first harrowing year of sobriety. He bites at his thumbnail, wondering suddenly if social isolation mighta been enough to make him delusional, projecting all his repressed social impulses onto the first person he stumbled on willing to talk to him. Christ. No, he thinks, there’s something there. Maybe not much. But something. Eventually, Ethan says, “We got a lot in common.”

“Rose said she thought you’d get on.”

“She’s got better judgement than I did at her age.”

“Well, that’s hardly a surprise,” Emma says, good humor in her voice.

Later, in the safety of his room above the garage, Ethan leaves a voicemail at his doctor’s office. It takes him a few tries to record one he’s comfortable leaving -- the first version sounds too desperate, the second too casual, and the third just embarasses him. Eventually he just asks the receptionist to call him first thing Monday morning to schedule an additional appointment if possible and gives up on being able to explain why he wants to come in. The weekend passes with the sort of excruciating slowness that flashes him back to the beginning of living with Emma, the brutal transition from hospital to hospital to hospital to finally privacy and cold wood floors, his books shipped from his parents’ house, Matt’s guitar, sitting in the room’s one window and watching Emma’s big empty front lawn. It makes him feel so old, staring out the window, realizing with something like panic how long it’s been since -- since everything. The trees are changing and the sky is heavy gray and it’s already October and it will be November soon, and then he turns 33. He keeps himself busy ‘til dark by watching the rain and convincing himself not to text Billy. Emma drops Rose off at a movie theater to see something with her friends and stays out, though doing what, Ethan didn’t ask and doesn’t know.

Just before he goes to bed early, he digs a notebook out from his box under the bed of things from college. It’s brittle from age but unused. He leaves it on his nightstand. It takes him a long time to fall asleep.

-

_The church reeks of smoke, and even though Goodnight reckons the belltower is sturdy enough it’s not about to collapse underneath him, he still feels lightheaded from nervousness. He slumps against the railing, watching one of the Rose Creek men appraisingly circle the new-hung bell, skimming his fingertips on it, pulling away with them darkened by ash. It’s a miracle the bell didn’t break, falling from the tower to the church floor. Goodnight hopes it’s not the last miracle to visit Rose Creek. To survive this, he’s well aware they’ll need at least a few more._

_Billy was one of the men hauling rope from the ground. From up here, Goodnight can see him with his sleeves rolled up, gleaming with sweat, and the rush of fondness he feels almost drowns out the dread that’s been curled in his gut since he first stepped foot in Rose Creek._

_But from the bell tower, he sees Red Harvest before Sam does, doing his mad bareback gallop, dust in his wake. And Goodnight doesn’t need to be down there to know the man isn’t bringing good news. Doesn’t have to be at Sam’s elbow to know this means Bogue’s drawn close._

_One of the villagers strikes the bell. Goodnight’s caught off-guard and flinches hard. He screws his eyes shut as his body jerks, wishing Billy was there beside him, wishing, in a moment of overwhelming cowardice, that Sam Chisolm hadn’t found them, that he might wake up from this as a bad dream and find himself and Billy crammed into the same narrow bed in a rented room in another town a couple hundred miles off. The reverberations of the bell fade, and Goodnight forces himself to open his eyes again to --_

_The smoke, the noise, the noise was always so much more overwhelming than he remembered in between battles, always thought he’d remembered it right this time but no, the constant sharp report of gunfire, the screaming, the cannons -- but Goodnight breathes even, never pulls the trigger too fast, never starts to hate the recoil, he just keeps--_

_“Mister Robicheaux, sir,” one of the villagers says._

_Goodnight feels himself flinch again. “Uh, yes,” he says, and the villager gestures to the ladder down to the church floor. He tugs at his cuffs and pretends his heart isn’t hammering. He wants to run. He wants to hide his head against Billy’s chest. He doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t want to watch Billy die. He wants to run. He wants to run. He clenches his hands into fists and feels his injured wrist throb. He takes a deep breath, and he descends._

-

Ethan wakes at his alarm and realizes groggily he’s slept through it going off for ten minutes. He fumbles to turn it off. He feels disoriented and sick, kinda like he used to feel when the hangovers got so bad they’d wake him up and keep him from getting back to sleep, and he takes his medication without thinking.

He sees the notebook and remembers, with a surge of adrenaline so overwhelming his vision starts to fade at the edges, and he grabs a pen and starts to write.

He’s still shaking when he gets out of the shower, and he doesn’t have to look at himself in the mirror to know he’s gone pale. He sits on the edge of his bed for ten or fifteen minutes wearing just boxers, hair still wet, and barely feels the cold settling into him. He turns his phone over in his hands and, before he can overthink it, he texts Billy: _I had a dream we were cowboys._

The secretary at Dr. Q’s office calls him back just before ten and says they’ve had a cancellation at two p.m. if that works for him, which it does, because all he does, Ethan, is he waits at home for dreams that make so much sense when he wakes and that fade to vague impressions of a strange desert, horses, guns they don’t make anymore, and when they fade enough he goes back to sleep to start all over again.

Around noon, when Ethan’s finished his usual beginning of the week deep cleaning of the first floor, his phone buzzes in his pocket. His hands are shaking as he unlocks it. A text from Billy: _Funny you should say that. Had a similar dream. Are you free tonight?_

He leaves for Dr. Q’s forty minutes before he needs to, but sitting in the waiting room and staring at the clock there isn’t a whole lot better than sitting in the living room and staring at the blank TV. He brought a book but can’t seem to pay attention to it. His phone feels incriminatingly heavy in his pocket. He wants to text back _yes, I’m always free, but did you know I don’t do so well outside,_ or _what did you dream about,_ anything at all, but can’t bring himself to.

It’s 2:15 before Dr. Q waves him in. He looks more awake than usual, Ethan thinks wryly, and isn’t chugging coffee for once.

“Good to see you,” Q says.

“Uh,” Ethan says. “Yeah.”

Dr. Q settles back in his chair, watching Ethan rearrange himself on the couch until he feels settled. When Ethan stills, Q says, “Is everything alright?”

Ethan’s mouth goes dry. He digs his fingers into the sides of his thighs and tries to keep his breathing steady. He feels dumb sitting there, realizing his mind’s been racing for days over a man he’s met twice, or a man he’s met twice that he can remember. Before he can lose his courage completely, he says, “This is gonna sound weird.”

“Okay,” Q says.

And then Ethan tells Q everything. Or not everything exactly -- he makes no mention of the dreams where he’s got the same face but a different name. But about Billy, about wanting to see him more but being terrified it’s just ‘cause he spends so much time alone, about being convinced he’s met the man before but not knowing where, about realizing how old he feels. His tongue feels heavy and clumsy, and he’s aware he’s probably stammering, knows he’s tripping over words like he always does when he’s out of it, but Q just lets him talk.

And then he runs out of words. Q stares at him consideringly -- not looking particularly worried or impressed, just considering. “It sounds like there’s a few things going on. Let me know if I’ve misunderstood you. You’re interested in this man, but you’re worried that interest isn’t reciprocated, and you also want to check if you’re only interested because you don’t spend a lot of time with other people.”

“Yeah,” Ethan says. “Sounds a fair bit more reasonable when you just put it that way, I guess.”

Dr. Q’s mouth quirks at the edges. “Ethan, your concerns are always reasonable. Sometimes disproportionate, but always reasonable.”

He isn’t sure whether to feel insulted or reassured.

“You mentioned you hadn’t even talked to Sam that much recently. Maybe reaching out to him would be a good place to start if you’re worried about that.”

“Right,” Ethan says.

“Also, this guy asked if you’re free tonight. Seems like he’s indicating interest to me. How are you going to respond?”

“Well, I can’t exactly offer to meet for dinner or a drink, so I don’t know.” Ethan’s surprised by how bitter his voice sounds. Dr. Q sighs at him, and he rubs at his temples with his thumbs. “I -- I guess I’ll tell him I’m free. Surely he’s figured I ain’t exactly well by now. And if he hasn’t already, he would soon anyhow, right? No use tellin’ someone a road’s easy to travel down if it ain’t.”

Dr. Q doesn’t say anything. Ethan glares at him, and Q raises his hands placatingly. “Since you’ve got your mind made up,” he says drily, “do it.”

“Goddamn you,” Ethan says, but it’s without venom. He texts Billy: _I’m free most nights outside of getting Rose home._ Ethan’s not even back to his car when his phone buzzes.

_Get dinner with me,_ the text says.

Ethan accidentally walks into his car.

He drives home before responding. By the time he pulls into the garage and shakily pulls his phone out of his jacket pocket, there’s two more texts. First: _If tonight’s not good, consider it a standing invitation :)_. Second: _We can get delivery ordered to my place if you want._

Ethan slumps, banging his head on the steering wheel. How did he know, he thinks dizzily, and he responds before he can overthink it: _What time you thinking?_

He gets a response immediately: _How’s 7?_

Ethan responds: _Perfect._

Billy responds with another smiley face.

Ethan tries to nap, fails, considers canceling, immediately nervously re-reads their conversation to reassure himself they did actually agree on tonight and this is actually happening, tries to read, can’t concentrate, gives up and spends forty minutes on the treadmill in the basement and takes a cold shower. He remembers to text Emma to let her know he’ll be out that evening. He figures she’ll assume he’s headed to AA and feels guilty for letting her think that. He picks up Rose, who tells him she’s glad he’s wearing a different sweater than usual and then idly threatens to burn his gray one.

By the time Ethan leaves, he’s so nervous that a month ago he’d be hunkered in his room, braced against the bed, waiting for the panic attack to start. But tonight, starting the car, he forces himself to breathe slow. He cracks the driver’s side window and lets the cold air brace him. Ethan’s never been the praying type, not before deployment and certainly not after deployment. But tonight, driving, he lets himself hope.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the delay updating. <3 If it's any consolation, here's a nice long chapter for you, and I've got most of the next one written, so it shouldn't take so long. As always, *thank you thank you thank you* for the encouraging feedback; it's the most encouraging thing. I hope you like this part as well!!

Ethan realizes, about to knock on Billy Park’s door, that it’s been just over four years since he last got laid, and the thought very nearly makes him turn on his heel to drive back home.

Then again, no matter how familiar Billy’s face seems, he doesn’t actually know the man. He doesn’t even know if Billy, you know, sleeps with men at all, not for sure, or, even if Billy is gay, if he’s even interested in Ethan at all. But then why the dinner invitation? Ethan can’t help but freeze for a moment. He thinks about the car in the driveway -- Billy hadn’t mentioned a roommate; surely the car is his, right?

The last man Ethan had been with was Anton, and Lord wasn’t that a sad thought -- Anton, who Ethan’d met at a talk therapy group, who’d been sober for three whole years which Ethan had then found monumentally impressive, Anton who was nearly as mercurial and intense as Ethan but more controlled about it. Anton who he’d nearly moved in with until Ethan came back to Anton’s place after AA and found Anton blacked out on the couch. What came after that was even worse: the barely-tempered urge to finish Anton’s bottle of gin, the stuttering and panicked conversation he’d had with Sam when Sam came to pick him up since he was too shaken to drive himself back to his own apartment, Anton calling him to apologize again and again and again. Ethan pretending things were fine until Anton admitted he’d been seeing someone else on the side. Ethan saying, well, you know, you’d’ve saved us both a whole lotta trouble if you’d just broken up with me instead of picking the bottle back up again, and Anton saying fuck you, you know that’s not why this happened, and Ethan saying are you so goddamned sure? and Anton being unable to meet his eyes and Ethan feeling strangely vindicated driving back to his shitty one-bedroom, thinking, well, I knew something was off, and then losing the next month to grain alcohol and Oxy, everything climaxing with him in the hospital again, Emma kind and blank talking to the nurse while Ethan listened to his heart monitor and wondered if he should admit to Sam that all he really wanted to do recently was be dead. Emma resting her hand on his and saying she had an extra room in the house. Rose visiting, seeming, though surely not, oblivious to the way Emma was so delicate around him, or maybe more restrained and resentful.

Yeah, Anton was the last person he’d fucked. That was the last person who fucked him.

Before that: other men who’d hurt him less. Other men who he remembers less vividly.

Billy, though -- he’s here for Billy. He squints his eyes closed and breathes deep. He reaches for his phone and texts Sam _I think I’m on a date_ and then, mind numb, knocks on the door.

Billy answers the door not a couple seconds after Ethan’s knocked and smiles at him immediately, kinda soft and private in a way Ethan’s never seen before but in a way that seems so goddamned familiar he feels crazy. Everything inside of Ethan freezes. There’d been a couple dozen fears inside him before Billy opening the door, but now, with Billy’s face so close to his, none of that seems important. “Uh,” Ethan says. “Hi.”

Billy opens the door a little further and gestures for Ethan to come in. “I want to warn you I might slip and call you Goody.”

“Well, that’s alright,” Ethan says, surprised at how much he means it. Billy’s front door opens right into his kitchen, which is small but cozy-feeling. “After all, I don’t suppose you came into this world with people callin’ you Billy, but you put up with it, so, uh…”

Billy laughs at that, throwing his head back and everything. Ethan stands frozen in the doorway at the curve of Billy’s throat. Billy has his ears pierced, small silver studs in each lobe, and they catch the light. “That is funny,” he says, clasping Ethan on the shoulder and tugging him toward the kitchen table. “I don’t cook well, but if you like Chinese food, this place--” He hands Ethan a take-out menu. “Very good.”

“I’m good for whatever,” Ethan says. Billy’s hand is still on his shoulder as they hunch over the small kitchen table. “Not a fussy eater. You got recommendations?”

Billy’s quick enough to say he likes their eggplant and lo mein especially that it’s pretty obvious Billy eats a lot of take-out or a lot of delivery. Ethan thinks mournfully that while he’s just a passable cook, Billy could probably do with something prepared in his own home. Billy’s wearing a flannel shirt, but it’s still somehow obvious that the man is mostly muscle. Does he eat enough?

They agree on what to order and Billy finally drops his hand from Ethan’s shoulder, pulling out his phone.

“I brought cash, I dunno how much this is gonna be or if you get some special discount for being a repeat customer which, uh, I am only assuming and I am not one to judge, um--”

Billy shakes his head at him. “I should get a discount,” he says. “Don’t worry about it.”

Definitely a date, right? Ethan rubs at the ball of his thumb, trying to keep his mind from racing somewhere it shouldn’t. “Well, thank you,” he says.

“Thank me if you like it.”

“Hey, you got mighty fine taste,” Ethan protests, stepping back a little as Billy turns to him, panicking a little bit at the proximity. “I trust I will.”

“Good taste,” Billy says drily, dropping his gaze to one-over Ethan, real slow from the floor back to his eyes. Then he raises an eyebrow.

“Uh,” Ethan says. Definitely a date. “For the most part, at least.”

“Soo-hyuk,” Billy says. “Park Soo-hyuk. Billy’s fine, though.”

Ethan repeats it back and grins sheepishly at Billy’s wince. Billy wiggles his flat palm in the air in the “well, sort of” gesture, and Ethan laughs a little. “Sorry,” he says.

“I’ve heard worse.”

Ethan wanders to the sink, peering nervously out the window. Billy’s place is cramped in close against its neighbors, unlike Emma’s place, so there’s no real visibility, but the paranoid soldier part of Ethan’s brain is reassured that means they have cover from long-range fire. Not that he’s expecting it. He’s just -- well. Broken, really.

“Glasses are in the cabinet to your left,” Billy says.

Ethan doesn’t flinch, but it’s a near thing. “Right,” he says, distracted, focus shifting to his own reflection in the glass. He doesn’t look great, but he looks better than he would have in the other sweater. After a couple seconds of staring he realizes what he’s doing and reaches for a glass. Water. Always good. He grabs two glasses and fills them both, keeping his gaze low, and brings one over to Billy, who’s dialing a number into his phone.

“You can look around if you want,” Billy says, not looking up. 

Ethan eyes the other man. Billy looks like the model of composure with his phone in one hand, leaning over the splay of take-out menus. But there’s still something tensed up about him, Ethan thinks, not that he can figure out what. Something about the set of his shoulders and neck, something subtle. “You don’t mind?” he asks, trying to sound casual.

Billy shakes his head and starts dialing. Ethan takes that as his cue and, yielding to curiosity and paranoia, leaves the glasses on the table and goes to check the windows in the living room, draws the blinds closed. The door to what he assumes is Billy’s bedroom is cracked open, and, feeling a little guilty, he lets himself in to check the one window on the long wall. Billy’s room is sparse, lit by one lamp on a nightstand, a dresser with workout clothes strewn on top of it. Ethan tries to keep himself from looking around too much. One half-window in the one bathroom, inset in the tiled shower wall. Anxiety a little settled, he returns to the living room and flops onto the couch to watch Billy finishing up on the phone. He feels like an old dog, insistent on pacing the perimeter three times before laying his head down. 

The minute Billy hangs up, he looks to Ethan in the living room, and Ethan’s already staring at him. Ethan thinks there might be a tug of a smile at Billy’s mouth, and, yeah, the man’s shoulders are definitely tense. Ethan can’t tell why, and it _annoys_ him mostly because he feels like what _should_ happen is he beckons and Billy wanders over and curls up against Ethan’s chest and either tells him what’s wrong or stays silent but lets Ethan hold him close ‘til at least he seems a little easier, but that’s not what’s gonna happen because that’s not who they are to each other. Not yet. Not now. Ethan bites at the edge of his thumbnail. He figures hey, do you have dreams about us in another life is a bad conversation starter, but Billy also hasn’t looked away from him yet.

So he pushes himself up and ambles into the kitchen to grab his glass of water off the table and maybe lets his side rest against Billy’s arm that he’s got planted on the table to brace himself on, maybe takes a long moment before pulling back because, yes, Billy’s definitely leaning into him a little bit, even if he’s diligently staring at the other end of the room.

The moment feels so wrong that Ethan thinks for a second that he’s in a nightmare, that he’s about to hear that damn owl and have them both flash into Antietam or Iraq. He takes a drink and puts his glass down. Christ, he thinks, eyeing Billy out of the corner of his eye, this is all wrong, ain’t it? He turns toward Billy, leaning on the table, too, and clears his throat. “Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” Billy says, voice flat.

But at least he kinda glances over at Ethan out of the corner of his eye, if only for a moment. It’s enough to send heat up Ethan’s spine. He feels nervy and anxious, like he wants to circle the property checking all the windows and locks again, but not just to keep himself safe, no, it’s because he _needs_ to soothe whatever worry or fear is making Billy still lean into him but refuse to look at him. And he wants to say something like that, wants to spill his godforsaken guts all over the table: tell Billy about the dreams he only kinda remembers, even when he checks his notes in the morning, about every single lonely night he spent high out of his mind or too drunk to stand, about every attempt, about _everything_ , and he wants to take everything from Billy in return -- every story he’ll tell about his family, about any trans-oceanic flight, anything, everything. But all he can bring himself to do is stare openly and say, voice shaking, “Billy.”

Billy straightens a little at that, though, leans away from Ethan but turns to meet his eyes. Billy’s brown eyes look overbright in the flourescent light, and Ethan’s first feverish thought is he’s gonna have to replace the lightbulbs in Billy’s kitchen sooner rather than later since this is no light to eat by.

“Come here, goddammit,” Ethan manages to say.

Billy’s mouth twists again like he’s about to say something wry, but then something changes in his eyes. He stands up straight, never quite looking away. Ethan thinks, with a stab of sadness, that Billy might look hopeful.

Ethan leans in, and Billy lets him, doesn’t pull away. Ethan breathes in sharp to steel himself and lets his eyes drift closed as finally, finally, he just gives in and kisses Billy.

He’s about to pull back when he feels Billy’s hands in the collar of his sweater, yanking him closer, and he stumbles a little, catches himself on Billy’s waist, and _yes_ , this is it, this is right. He hears himself whimper as Billy cards his fingers through the hair at the back of his neck, pulling him in to deepen the kiss. And Ethan can feel his heart hammer and his hands shake, but for once he has no desire to break away to hide.

By all rights, the moment should be more awkward than it is. It’s been more years than Ethan wants to think about since he’s just stood and kissed someone, but, shit, Billy’s hand cradling his jaw, his thumb tilting Ethan’s chin up so Billy can nip at his bottom lip -- this is right. It has all the familiarity and warmth of his own bed. He paws at the hem of Billy’s t-shirt before figuring fuck it and slipping his hands underneath, shuddering into the kiss at the warmth of Billy’s skin and this, this is it, Billy backing him against the wall and reaching for his belt, this is it, this is perfect, this is all Ethan could ever want, this is all Ethan could ever hope for.

When Ethan drops to his knees to mouth at the taut denim stretched over Billy’s cock, Billy’s quiet whine, the abortive jerk of his hips into Ethan’s face, that’s hot enough Ethan’s heart skips a beat. He leans back onto his heels to fumble with Billy’s zipper, but Billy’s steady hands crowd him out, and Ethan hears himself say, “It’s kinda been a while, uh, which--”

And one of Billy’s hands drifts down to cradle his face, Ethan leaning into the warmth of Billy’s palm, and Billy strokes his thumb against Ethan’s cheek. A tendon in Billy’s neck jumps. Billy’s face is backlit and hard to read, but Ethan can see that Billy’s eyes are wide and dark. He thinks he hears Billy growl out, “Good,” all dark and possessive, and maybe Ethan’s cheeks go hot as he presses wet open-mouthed kisses to Billy’s hip, delirious at the way Billy’s hands are twisting in his hair. Tracing the outline of muscle and bone with his tongue, it occurs to him that this is easier than he remembered, that he’s unused to feeling so unselfconscious or even, God help him, confident -- those thoughts, though, those fade, too, drowned out by Billy’s short, hitching breaths. Ethan sucks and digs his fingernails into Billy’s hips and whimpers around Billy’s cock, mind going beautifully blank, thinking of nothing in particular, following instinct. Everything that follows is so easy and ecstatic that it feels like a dream -- a good dream.

-

By the time the food arrives, they’re draped over each other on the sofa, watching reruns of The Twilight Zone with the volume most of the way down. When the delivery guy knocks on the door, Ethan flinches, and Billy kisses him on the forehead before getting up. Ethan forces himself to sit up all the way, rubbing his palms into his eyes to try and wake himself up a little. He’s drowsy and sated. Once Billy comes back and starts arranging plastic containers on the coffee table, he’s surprised by the wave of hunger that hits him.

“All good?” Billy asks. Ethan momentarily thinks Billy’s asking him if he knows how to use the chopsticks he’s fumbling to unwrap until Billy says, sounding cautious, “You seemed startled. Just wanted to check.”

“Oh, yeah.” Ethan flicks his wrist, chopsticks in hand. “I startle easy. S’alright.”

Billy’s silent in response, sitting down sideways on the couch, back against the armrest, one bare foot just barely brushing Ethan’s thigh. Ethan leans in a little bit, nudging Billy’s ankle with his forearm, and Billy huffs a laugh, though at what exactly Ethan’s not sure. He grins in between bites anyways, watching black-and-white cornfields on the TV. He’s seen this episode before, but given how pleasantly distracted and hazy he feels, that’s probably for the best. Wouldn’t be able to follow otherwise. 

I’m gonna fuck this up, he thinks. I fuck this up, and I can’t wait to see how. He portions out rice and eggplant onto one of the styrofoam plates. The TV cuts to commercial. When he glances over at Billy, Billy’s staring right at him, half-smiling, and doesn’t look away, just cocks one eyebrow. Ethan’s neck flushes and he settles back against the couch with his plate balanced on one knee. It feels weird eating with somebody watching him like that, but he also doesn’t mind exactly. Everything feels tense again, but not unpleasantly.

Comfortable silence for long enough that the next episode starts, one that Ethan hasn’t seen.

His phone buzzes on the coffee table. Maybe it’s Emma, worried that Ethan’s out late, but no, he thinks, swiping his thumb to unlock the screen, Emma knows he’s been doing things after AA meetings, which is what he usually does when he’s out Monday nights. No, it’s Sam: _Well, how’s it going?_

Ethan grins to himself and types out So far so good, then turns his phone on silent and slides it into his pocket. Billy’s foot flexes against his thigh as Billy laughs at him, and Ethan feels himself flush again. “That was Sam,” he says.

Billy just wiggles his foot again and when Ethan glances over at him, he’s studiously eating with his head cocked toward the TV, but his eyes are still all crinkled up like he’s smiling. Lord, the man is handsome, though. Billy’s hair is back up in a low bun, and his eyes glint with reflected light. Ethan’s chest goes tight just staring at him. A wonder he survived kissing him when just seeing him gets Ethan this worked up. He’s not sure his heart will hold out through the next round -- assuming, that is, of course, there is a next round -- a next dinner, a next night. Christ, there might be. Ethan realizes he’s been gawping. His shoulders hunch up as he curls over his food.

“I don’t know Sam,” Billy finally says, voice all warm and amused.

“Uh, shit, right, of course you don’t,” Ethan says. He accidentally drops a piece of eggplant and pushes it around his plate instead of picking it back up. “He’s, uh, or I know him because of AA. He’s my sponsor. Known him for years and years. You’d like ‘im, I think.” He picks his plate up off his lap and rests it on the coffee table so he can smooth his palms down the top of his thighs, nervousness spiking. “I don’t drink, obviously. It’s been a while, a real long while, but they teach you not to start feelin’ too secure about that or anything. And, uh, so Sam helps with that. And we’re friends, too, I mean.”

Billy is serving himself more food. “I don’t drink much,” he says.

It feels like permission to keep talking. “I don’t know how much you figured out about me, but you know I jump easy at loud noises and stuff like that, and I ain’t so good with new places, especially if they’re wide open. A couple years there I just stayed at home, mostly. And sometimes I get flashbacks and shut down.” He risks glancing over at Billy, who’s poking his rice with his chopsticks. “Maybe you knew all that already from Rose, I guess,” he says, surprising himself with his bitterness.

Unfair to blame Rose for being honest about who she lives with to an adult in her life who she trusts. Unfair that Matt’s dead and buried and Rose and Emma get Ethan instead -- Ethan who’d always been following in Matt’s wake anyways, following him all the way to Iraq. Ethan knows how he handled his father dying, and it wasn’t pretty, and that was older than Rose is even now, and Lord knows he’d lashed out at everyone he could reach.

“I've known Rose for a long time,” Billy says, real even. “She's told me a lot about you over the past two years.”

“So I take it she didn’t forget to mention I’ve been a shut-in for the better part of the time she's known me?”

Ethan feels Billy shifting on the couch but can’t bring himself to look over. Billy clears his throat. “She's mentioned you dress up as a cowboy every Halloween without fail, even though her mom makes fun of you for it, and you always remind her mom to pick up candy that isn't chocolate because Rose doesn't like chocolate but Emma forgets that,” Billy says. “And that you're a good storyteller, that you tell her stories about her dad that no one else will.”

“Oh,” Ethan says.

“She never told me you didn't like leaving the house, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't put that together. But she also didn't tell me you were a kind man sometimes too proud for your own good. I put that together, too.”

Ethan feels -- he doesn't know how he feels. Chastened but relieved at the same time. He screws his eyes shut and leans forward into his hands, digging his thumbs into his temples. He wants to say, no, goddamn, you don’t know me, don’t tell me these things. “Rose talks too much,” he finally says. His voice cracks.

He feels the couch shift as Billy stands up. Ethan digs his fingernails into his scalp to try and ground himself, but then Billy’s hands are on his shoulders, pushing him back against the couch. Billy straddles Ethan’s lap easily, his weight warm and steady, and Ethan watches Billy examining him, Billy tugging at Ethan’s collar and smoothing his hands down Ethan’s chest. Ethan rests his hands on Billy’s thighs and closes his eyes, dizzied and disoriented, and lets his head loll back. Billy kisses him all slow and thorough, hands steady on Ethan’s shoulders, and Ethan lets himself reach around to Billy’s ass to pull him in closer, then slide his hands under Billy’s shirt again to his lower back.

After a few minutes, Billy ends up nuzzling the side of Ethan’s neck, slumped against him like he’s boneless. Ethan’s running his hands up and down the parts of Billy’s back that he can reach with the other man draped over him, eyes closed, trying not to think about his kinda outburst there, trying not to think about Billy being able to steady him almost without trying, wondering how the hell he got lucky enough to be petting at this man’s back, enjoying the warmth of another body. God, that was something he hadn’t realized he missed.

He has to turn his head to yawn, and Billy huffs air against him like a quiet laugh. “Mm,” Ethan says, “shuddup.”

Billy curls one hand around the side of Ethan’s neck and kisses just below his ear instead of responding. Ethan turns to kiss the side of Billy’s face before he can slump again.

“I should head home and let you sleep,” Ethan says.

Billy makes some noise against the side of his neck. "You don't have to leave," he says.

Ethan grins and links his hands together at the small of Billy's back, leaning in to breathe in the smell of the other man's hair. "That's kind of you to offer," he says, face kind of hot. It's a tempting thought. He wants to say yes. But goddamn if he doesn't feel overwhelmed already, just from the hour or two he's had already. Billy's tensed up against him a little, though, neck stiff, and Ethan untangles himself enough to stroke at Billy's hair. "When can I see you again, _cher_?" He’s a little embarrassed by how tender his voice goes, but it makes Billy relax again, so whatever.

"Friday?"

"Mm. Perfect." He kisses the side of Billy's head, then Billy leans back off of where he's been leaned onto Ethan's chest, sitting up straight. Ethan rakes his eyes over the man sitting in his lap, sleepy-looking, hair dishevelled. It's damned rewarding, looking at Billy. Ethan tries to keep himself from fantasizing about waking up next to this. Instead, he runs a hand through his hair and grins in a way that might come close to leering. "Lord if you ain't always a sight for sore eyes," he says.

Billy's lips just barely quirk as he stands. He offers Ethan a hand up, which he takes. "Friday," Billy says.

"Friday," Ethan says back.

He messages Sam from his car. _Definitely a date. Can you get coffee sometime before Friday?_

It’s just before ten when he gets back home. Emma and Rose are watching TV in the living room. He goes to splash his face with water in the bathroom. His hair looks tousled, so he does it best to smooth it down, and there’s a spot on his shoulder where he might end up with a hickey, but the sweater mostly hides it. He joins Emma and Rose, curled up in the big armchair that neither of them likes, and does his best to concentrate on the medical drama they’re watching. It’s hard, though -- his thoughts keep drifting to Billy.

After Rose slips off to bed, after them exchanging their goodnights like they always do, Emma doesn’t change the channel. Ethan doesn’t realize it until Emma says, “Must have been a good date. You know, you look absolutely lovestruck.”

She laughs for longer than he’s ever heard her laugh when he nearly tumbles out of the armchair.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) sorry for the late update -- like a lot of people, I've been in something of a stupor since tuesday night  
> 2) two people to thank: T for helping me spot typos in the first draft of this and [foralllove](http://archiveofourown.org/users/foralllove) for beta-ing/helping me figure out a bunch of structure stuff.   
> 3) heads up -- this chapter includes a description of a panic attack
> 
> all unspotted errors mine; next chapter should be up by sunday at the latest. thank y'all so much for commenting and stuff, it's the most encouraging thing and i really appreciate it : )

Ethan wakes up restless. He dry swallows his paroxetine and vitamin D and does push-ups 'til his arms shake, not bothering to count reps. Knows he dreamed something he doesn't want to remember. He takes a cold shower and goes downstairs to make coffee.

When he gets to the kitchen, he finds Emma already there, wrapped up in her bathrobe, staring emptily into the distance. It's a familiar expression, just disconcerting to see on someone else. There's most of a pot of coffee left, so he pours himself a mug.

When he comes to sit down across from her, she snaps out of it, nodding at him. “Sleep well?” she asks drily.

“Never better,” Ethan says, smirking when she rolls her eyes at him. He’s got a dark bruise on his collarbone, thankfully hidden entirely by the gray sweater he’s reclaimed. “So, uh, what gave me away?”

“That you were on a date?” Emma’s mouth twists into a smile. “Yesterday was the first time in months I’ve seen you wear something other than that awful gray sweater.”

Ethan tugs at the sweater in question self-consciously. “It’s not _that_ bad.”

“It’s pretty bad.”

He can feel his face going hot and runs his hand over the lower half of his face, thumb and index finger resting over each cheekbone. "I like it," he protests, voice muffled by his palm.

Emma waves one hand in some gesture of mollification. "I know, I know," she says.

She sounds lighter, though, amused. He's struggling to control his expression but knows his eyebrows are all knitted up in worry. He can't quite tell why it bothers him, Emma knowing, but bother him it does.

She shakes her head as she gets up to put her empty bowl in the sink. "I'm glad it went well," she says.

He watches her refill her mug of coffee. When she sits back down, Ethan asks, "How's work?"

She sighs heavy, and Ethan asks, "That bad?", and she shrugs.

"Kind of," she says.

"I'm gonna get more coffee," Ethan says, "and then you tell me about this, you hear?"

She shrugs. Ethan gets up and refills his mug and pours in two packets of fake sugar. From upstairs there's the familiar thud of the shower going on, meaning Rose is up and about, not sleeping through her alarm again. 

"Okay," he says, sitting back down. "Tell me."

Emma sighs, twirling a bit of hair around one index finger, and starts talking. Ethan doesn't interrupt; he knows better. He tries to listen like Sam listens. She talks about unreliable volunteers and her second in command having to take time off due to a death in the family, about feeling guilty for leaving at exactly five p.m., about every minute away from a nonprofit feeling like theft at worst, an indulgence at best. Ethan says "Right" and "Uh-huh" at the right times, meets Emma's eyes when she looks back at him.

Eventually there's the sound of Rose turning the shower off from upstairs, and Emma shakes her head. "I need to go get dressed," she says. "Thanks for listening."

"Hey," he says, smiling a little. "Any time. You're doin' good work."

"Well, I'm certainly doing _work_ ," she says. She doesn't look any easier than when Ethan found her, but, well, that's just how things go. Ethan knows that better than just about anyone.

He finishes his coffee and checks his phone; nothing. Not unexpected, he tells himself. Billy’s got no reason to text him. Sam might be up but sure as hell has better things to do than be fussing with his phone. He retreats upstairs to return to his coding and lets time drift by while he works. Eventually Sam texts him back: _I can pick you up tomorrow at 5:30. Thursday works too_. Ethan responds _Works for me_. 

It isn’t until he’s waiting in the parking lot for Rose that he remembers he still hasn’t heard from Billy. He keeps telling himself that if it bothers him that much, he can just be the one to text first, but then he wonders what to say and starts panicking a little and forces himself to think about something else. When Rose comes out, she says hello and then immediately sticks her earbuds in, tapping away at her phone with the sort of intensity that makes Ethan worry, but with Rose, Ethan knows to just wait her out. When they get to the house, Rose yanks her earbuds out and hisses at Ethan, “People are _dumb._ ”

“Yes,” Ethan says. “They are.”

Rose stares back at him, eyes narrowed, and nods in satisfaction at something.

During dinner she says she has a group project for history due Thursday that absolutely no one is putting any work into besides her and she’ll be working on it at a friend’s house all of Wednesday. Ethan asks about her friends, and she avoids replying. She leaves the table early, going to her room without explanation, and Ethan and Emma sit in silence for a few minutes before Emma caves and goes to turn the TV on in the living room for background noise. 

-

There are mornings where he wakes up before his alarm, or right as his alarm goes off, and then there are mornings where--

_Waking to machine gun fire and screaming in Arabic --_

_Waking to someone screaming, and when the screaming stops long enough for a breath in, the sound of saw through bone, then screaming again--_

_Waking to his wrists pinned to his chest, his body pinned to the cold earth, and someone murmuring in his ear -- Billy --_

\--mornings where he remembers waking what feels like a hundred times before finally sitting up in bed, head pounding, hand to his heart, wondering if this is is all real or if he’s still dreaming.

Wednesday morning, the minute after he’s taken his meds, he texts Sam, _Do you ever have weird nightmares?_ For the second morning in a row, he’s too shaken to write anything down in the notebook he keeps on his nightstand. 

It's a few minutes past nine when Sam texts him back. _Don't we all?_

Ethan grinds his jaw, sitting alone at the kitchen table with coffee and the crossword. He wants to text back, _Don't act like you don't know what I mean._ But, he thinks, that's the battle behind us, and there's a battle in front of us, and if we get them confused, we'll all end up dead. And even though he's not quite sure what that means, it's enough to help him steady his breathing.

He respond, _I'll see you this evening._

Sam doesn't reply.

-

Sam picks him up just after 5:30, driving the same battered Ford pick-up Ethan always recognizes in the Methodist church parking lot before AA. It takes effort, hiking himself into the passenger seat, but Ethan's gotta admit there's a good view of the road in exchange, better than in Ethan's station wagon. He kinda laughs to himself, surveying the neighborhood all laid out in front of him from the new angle: dead grass, gray sky, empty driveways. Won't be that way for long. A few more minutes and everyone starts getting home, things start getting loud.

Sam pulls off the curb without saying anything. He's got the radio low. "So what prompts the sudden social call?" he asks. “Ain’t complainin’, but I’m curious.”

Ethan is watching the mailboxes pass by in a blur. He should know the people who the mailboxes belong to. Wonders if Emma knows them, if Rose does. He leans against the window and finds it cold but doesn't mind. His breath fogs up the glass. "Well, you know," he says. "Been awhile."

"You don't say," Sam says drily.

Ethan's laugh fogs the glass up even more. He shifts a little to glance at Sam, head still leaned against the glass. The man's as steady as ever, tan winter coat zipped up to his throat, shoulders straight and square. He doesn't say anything more. Sam knows there's something else up, of course he does; Sam knows him well as anyone. God forbid he and Emma ever compare notes. Ethan would be fucked.

"Where we headed?" Ethan asks.

"Place that Annabelle works at," Sam says.

"Oh, no shit."

"She ain't workin' now, but she's all territorial now about where I buy my coffee. Made me promise never to go to Starbucks unless it was some sort of emergency." The fondness in Sam's voice belies whatever exasperation there might be, too.

"No kiddin'," Ethan says.

Sam chuckles to himself, gaze still steady on the road. "No kiddin'. I'm torn between tellin' her I'm proud she takes the job so serious and tellin' her not to get too cozy believin' her boss got her best interests in mind, you know?"

Ethan laughs too and returns to staring out the window. It's been awhile since he let someone else drive him somewhere, he realizes, at least a year. He'd rather be behind the wheel himself, but at least with Sam the part of his head all obsessed with whether or not there's an ambush around the corner, that part of him calms down a little bit. "How long she been workin' there?"

"Oh, couple months. Since just after school started, maybe."

"She know where she's goin' to college just yet?"

Sam sighs. "Oh, don't you remind me. How long 'til Rose is all graduated?"

"She's a freshman now."

"Goddamn," Sam says. "I don’t believe it. Annabelle don't know yet. In state, probably. Or not too far off."

"That her decision or your wife's?"

Sam chuckles again. "Little bit of both, I reckon."

Ethan drags his knuckles across the car window, dragging clear lines across where his breath's made the glass go opaque. They're headed into some quieter part of town, not downtown, which he's thankful for. "She know what she wants to do yet?"

"Naw," Sam says fondly. "Told her there's no rush to make up her mind, long as she finds somethin' she wants to do that she’ll get paid to do."

"Good advice," Ethan says absently. He wonders when it'll start snowing.

Neither of them speaks again 'til Sam pulls into the parking lot. "You sure you're alright with this?"

Ethan jerks himself away from staring out the window, realizing he's started to drift away from himself again. "Huh? Yeah, why wouldn't I be?"

Sam laughs at him all quiet. "Ethan St. John, you are a piece of work sometimes."

"And don't I know it," Ethan drawls back.

Sam finds a parking space and throws the truck into park. As he pulls the parking brake, he says, "You get uncomfortable, you tell me, we can get outta there whenever you want."

"Yeah, yeah. Sure thing."

Sam sits still until Ethan looks over at him and finds him staring dead back at him. "Don't fuck with me, Ethan," he says.

Ethan winces. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah."

"This place is gonna be busy. After-work crowd."

Right, Ethan thinks, drawing his thumb down the edge of his jaw. Of course. He bites at his lip, staring back at Sam. "I got meds if I need 'em."

"You ever take 'em before?"

"Damn straight." Then, like it hasn’t taken him six years to be willing to, “I ain’t _that_ stubborn.”

Sam rolls his eyes and unlocks the doors.

The coffee shop is tucked into the edge of a strip mall, the sort of place Ethan normally doesn't notice at all driving past, but it's nice. More crowded than he expected, even with Sam's warning, but Sam shoos him off to go sit in a booth in the back and wait. Ethan sits with his back to the wall, turning his phone over in his hands, staring at Sam waiting in line. He checks his texts again; still nothing from Billy, which annoys him. He forces himself to put his phone down and smooth his hands over his thighs, staring at Sam's back again, then texts Billy _How's your day been?_ and immediately regrets it.

He wishes he'd brought a book, something to fidget with. But just a few minutes later and Sam's sitting across from him with two paper cups. "In case we need to leave," Sam says, handing one to Ethan. "No need to worry about mugs."

Ethan raises one eyebrow at Sam like he's cocky, but really he's kinda glad for Sam's foresight. Something about the buzz of so many people is already starting to get to him. "Thanks," he says.

"Yours is hot chocolate," Sam says before he can take a drink. "You're so wound up right now I think if I gave you coffee you might have a goddamn heart attack."

Ethan scoffs and notices he's been bouncing his knee. He rubs at one eyebrow with the back of his thumb, never looking away from Sam. "Fair," he says.

Sam rolls his eyes. "You're goddamn right. So, I repeat my question from earlier: why the social call? What changed, Ethan?"

That makes Ethan look away. He stares at his phone, lying silent on the shiny wood table, and a wave of emotion surges through him, a confused tangle of paranoia and hope and anger. He wants to tell Sam everything about Billy, but then there’s knowing Dr. Q expects an update come next Monday, that Emma probably knows, and he wants suddenly to hold all knowledge of Billy close to him and let no one on earth see it. It’s all his, only his, and it’s his job to keep that knowledge safe. The suddenness of the feeling crests into something like embarrassment because obsession is the whole reason he’s here in the first place: trying to make sure this thing between him and Billy isn’t just loneliness. Isn’t just isolation. Isn’t just delusion. He spins his phone on its back, watching the way its screen catches the light. The coffee shop is playing something soft and guitar-based that he doesn’t recognize at all. He settles his shoulders and thinks about Rose and Emma and what they’re going to have for dinner. He thinks of the Lorazepam in his inside pocket, reassuring as his holster used to be, back in the day. He sighs and looks up to Sam, who’s looking at him expectantly but evenly.

Ethan says, “I’m just tryin’ to get better.” He spins his phone again, then sticks it back in his pocket, annoyed by how it’s not gone off again. “Dr. Q wants me goin’ out more. And since that’s somethin’ I’m suddenly capable of, I’m tryin’. And you’re the unlucky sonuvabitch to catch my attention first.”

"Lucky me," Sam says, real dry.

"Well," Ethan says.

"So catch me up," Sam says.

Ethan tries. Talks about how Dr. Q finally convinced him to go on medication, about the jittery adjustment to taking pills every morning again. About how he's just now realizing how much of a shut-in he let himself be, about never wanting to have a panic attack in front of Rose again, coming back to with an EMT calling his name and Rose looking terrified. Missing the camaraderie of his drinking days, being too nervous to leave the house. Most of it's stuff Sam knows about, just from Ethan mentioning it in AA if nothing else, but Sam listens regardless, patient and hmm-ing in the right places, never interrupting.

"That's good," is all Sam says when Ethan finally runs out of words. "Good that you still get along with this doctor, good you're reachin' out again."

"I'm startin' to feel a little stir-crazy," Ethan admits. His hot chocolate's gone cold, but he drinks it anyways.

"You thought about goin' back to work? Not just freelancin'."

Ethan shrugs, holding the cup in both hands. "Last real job I had was bartendin', Sam. Ain't like I'm goin' back to that."

"Well, obviously," Sam drawls. "Might do you good, though, if you can find somethin’. Structure, seein' people. Stuff like that."

"Yeah." He considers it -- between whatever scarce work he does from home and the government money and, of course, Emma letting him live with her without paying rent, it's not like he needs the cash. And the idea of having coworkers again is suffocating. But, he thinks, taking another sip, it's a thought. "Huh."

He asks Sam a question about his daughters, watches the corners of Sam’s eyes crinkle up with delight, and as Sam goes on about Annabelle’s boyfriend being scared witless of Sam, about Carly and Marie being in the same homeroom class for the first time since third grade, Ethan feels himself relax. He’s always liked listening to Sam talk.

In the middle of Sam regaling him with a story about Annabelle practicing for job interviews, there’s the sound of twisting metal and Ethan flinches hard, gaze snapping to the window outside. Sam grabs his wrist. “Let me check what it is,” he says, voice authoritative. Sam isn’t the only one standing up -- an employee, an older woman, two other men all hurry outside.

And Ethan is--

_The bullet catches him in the chest and then the Jeep flips. Ethan thinks briefly, absurdly, that it’s incredibly bad luck to have both of those things happen in the same instant, but then he can’t think anymore. Everything whited out by pain. Pressing his bare hand to the wound. Crawling without thinking to shield himself underneath the upturned chassis. Martinez screaming on the comm. There’s other sounds. Gunfire, screaming, wind -- he doesn’t know. Martinez is grabbing him and Ethan wonders if this is how Matt felt, numb and dopey and lightheaded, ears ringing--_

“Ethan.”

Sam’s voice, Ethan thinks. He screws his eyes shut and breathes in through his teeth. His shoulders are so tight they hurt. He’s not sure where he is. Hears Sam talking but doesn’t know what he’s saying. Feels Sam reaching into his jacket, hears the dry high-pitched rattle of a pill bottle. Sam’s hand on top of his fist, turning it over, pressing something into his palm. “Take it,” Sam says, voice gentle.

_“Take the shot!”_

Ethan shoves the pill under his tongue. He braces his forearms against the table and leans his head into them like he’s in crash position. He’s breathing too fast, and his heart feels like it’s about to give out. Sam shoves him further into the booth and sits next to him, has one hand on Ethan’s shoulder, just resting there, just warmth and reassuring weight.

Take the shot, Ethan thinks as the pill dissolves. When did that happen? He wants to dive under the table, run, get out -- something. _Take the shot._ He holds still. He sits and breathes, Sam’s hand steady on his shoulder. “Fuck,” he says. There’s sirens in the distance, getting louder.

Sam squeezes his shoulder. “There was a car crash outside. Pretty bad, but nobody’s dyin’. You with me?”

“Fuck,” Ethan hisses.

“How long that stuff take to kick in?”

Ethan shrugs. His knee is bouncing again, and he can’t stop it. He thinks his hands are shaking but isn’t sure. Thinks of Dr. Q telling him to breathe slow and focus on sensory stimulation. Forces himself to sit up and downs the rest of the hot chocolate Sam bought him, neck rigid. He’s gonna ache later, he knows it.

“You want somethin’ more to drink?” Sam asks. “Tea, maybe.”

“Yeah,” Ethan says. He digs his thumbs into his temples, knee still bouncing. “Yeah, that’d be good. No caffeine.”

Sam snorts. “You’re tellin’ _me._ ”

Sam gets up; Ethan misses the physical presence of him immediately. His phone buzzes. He ignores it. He waits. Sam comes back with a paper cup. “Green tea,” Sam says.

“Thanks,” Ethan says. “Thanks. Fuck. Sorry.”

“You ain’t got nothin’ to apologize for,” Sam says. “Car crash is pretty random, couldn’t’ve seen that comin’, and you did alright. You feelin’ better?”

“It’s still kicking in,” Ethan says. His voice is shaking. “The lorazepam, I mean.”

“Okay,” Sam says. “No rush. You let me know when you want to leave. You feel safe right here?”

“Yeah,” Ethan says. “Yeah.” He zips his jacket up, staring at the orange pill bottle on the table. His phone buzzes again, and this time he grabs it, even though his hands are shaking. Breathes in, breathes out. Unlocks it. The sirens get louder and louder until their volume stays steady -- must mean the ambulance has arrived. His phone buzzes again in his hand.

Three texts from Billy. _Busy day, totally exhausted :(_ Then, _How about u?_ and _We’re still on for Friday, right?_ Before Ethan can start typing out a response, his phone buzzes yet again: _Tried watching more twilight zone after u left, very boring without u_.

Ethan grins and sets his phone down to let his hands steady before responding. It’s another ten minutes before he feels steady enough to stand. In Sam’s truck, he texts back, _Well, let’s just say my day’s all the better for having heard from you._

“We should do this again next week,” Sam says as he parks outside Emma’s house. Doesn’t say it like a request.

“Yeah,” Ethan says. “I’ll try not to, uh, freak out on you next time.”

“You know damn well not to try me, St. John.”

He knows what Sam means: don’t worry about it. Ethan grins lazily as he climbs out of the truck, turning back to drawl, “I don’t deserve you, Sam.”

“Hell no you don’t,” Sam says, but it’s with affection.

Nobody home despite the fact it’s after seven. Ethan puts on TCM, running some silent movie he hasn’t heard of, and sprawls out over the whole couch, texting Billy until he nods off. He wakes when someone slams the door -- must be Rose, he thinks. Still the same movie on TV. 

He goes to bed early and sleeps dreamlessly. Wakes up clear-headed five minutes before his alarm. Takes his meds, does the same exercises he always does, takes a cold shower. Downstairs, Emma with the same distant, hazy expression. "I'll be home late," she says, before he's even had a chance to sit down across from her.

"Okay," Ethan says.

"Might be a pizza night."

Ethan stirs idly at his coffee, watching Emma's expression. "I've got no complaints with that, but I can cook. Sure there's enough in the fridge to rustle up somethin'."

"You sure?" She looks surprised. "Delivery's no problem, really."

"And neither is cookin', so that's that. We still got frozen shrimp, don't we? I can make somethin'." He settles back in his chair, crosses his legs. "Don't worry about it, Emma.”

The day passes quickly. Billy texts him every once and awhile -- _I keep forgetting Chinese takeout doesn’t reheat that great,_ and Ethan always replies with something like _You are keeping it covered in the microwave, right?_ Dumb stuff that makes him grin all day. He’s in the car to pick up Rose before he knows it.

“How’d the presentation go?” Ethan asks as soon as Rose buckles in. “In your history class.”

Rose groans and says “Fine” in a way that makes Ethan think it maybe didn’t go fine, but then she’s got her earbuds in again, scrolling through her phone like she’s trying to find something. Ethan gets the message and lets her sulk over whatever she’s sulking over, lets her bolt straight to her room once they get home. He tidies the kitchen until Emma gets home, looking exhausted. She goes straight to the fridge to grab a can of seltzer water. “I’m taking a nap,” she says. “Wake up me if I’m not up in forty minutes.”

“Sure thing,” Ethan says.

She flashes him something like a smile and goes straight upstairs. Ethan’s only alone with the clean kitchen for a few minutes before Rose comes charging downstairs, stomping like she wants to pick a fight, with her laptop shoved under one arm, backpack dangling over one shoulder.

Ethan ignores her and starts cooking. Lets time clip by the same pleasant way it does when he’s working on a problem he knows how to solve. Thaws the shrimp and corn, put water on to boil for the polenta. Thinks idly of growing up in the kitchen, getting underfoot, shucking corn and green beans. Pours the polenta in to cook. Minces garlic. Measures out salt and pepper. Pours oil in the skillet and waits for it to sizzle before tossing in the corn. 

Ethan forgets, sometimes, that he's younger than Emma, if only by a few years. He knows he's aged faster than her, though a fair amount of that's probably attributable to the Oxy and alcohol. Even given that, though, there's something vital about her that he doesn’t have. He remembers the first time Matthew brought her home for the holidays, Matthew telling Ethan after picking him up from the airport. "She's just...bright," he'd said. He gestured with both hands despite being behind the wheel. "I don't know how to explain it, but you'll understand when you meet her."

Ethan flicks the skillet, pleased with the way the corn is browning. He checks on the polenta on the stove. Rose has turned on music in the living room that he neither recognizes nor likes, but, he supposes, that's the cost of living with a teenager.

He isn’t sure how long it is before Emma returns, looking, Ethan is pleased to note, a little more well-rested. "Thanks for cooking," she says.

"Least I can do," Ethan says.

"Anything I can do to help?"

"Naw, nothin' to it. Nearly done. Maybe go fetch Rose, tell her to set the table. Haven't unloaded the clean dishes yet, let her know that."

He hears Emma leave, hears her bickering lightly with Rose in the living room. "Can I at least turn the music up?" he hears Rose snap.

The music goes up and Ethan smiles to himself as Rose stomps into the kitchen, going straight for the dishwasher. "We need bowls," he says.

"Just spoons?" she asks. She still sounds annoyed.

"Naw, all the cutlery," Ethan says. "'less you plan on eatin' all this shrimp in one bite. Better if you cut it, if you ask me."

Rose mutters something and hurries off with silverware tucked under her chin which, Ethan thinks, is not particularly hygenic, but he knows better than to comment. Rose comes back for glasses, though, and fills the water pitcher, then starts unloading the clean dishes into the cabinets, humming along to whatever's blaring from the living room.

"So, uh, what are we listening to?" Ethan asks.

Rose snorts. "I'm guessing you hate it."

"Well," Ethan says, "it's...not my usual fare."

Rose starts explaining something about Canadian indie pop and the band -- "They're called Tegan and Sara, they're twins," she says -- as Ethan keeps cooking. Puts the corn aside, tosses in the shrimp and garlic. There's some elaborate way to tell them apart, Rose says, and lists how their personalities are different, too, and such and such was their first album and something about electronic music. It's mostly in one ear, out the other for Ethan, despite his best intentions, but he tries to listen.

"So this is their newest album?" he guesses.

Closing the empty dishwasher, Rose rolls her eyes. "No, it's their second-newest." But she pauses for a second and grudgingly says, "That smells good. What is it?"

"Shrimp and polenta," Ethan says. "With garlic and lemon and corn."

"Ew, garlic."

"What's wrong with garlic? You got some secret plans to go make out with some boy later tonight that I don't know about?"

No response. Ethan turns from the shrimp to see Rose kinda slumped against the dishwasher. "Or girl," he offers. "Either way, somethin' I don't know about?"

She glares at him, but there's no weight to it. "Maybe," she says.

Ethan rolls his eyes back at her, which she laughs at. "Go put the breadboard on the table," he says.

She does.

After dinner, after Rose helping him put the dishes away and teasing him about his music taste, fleeing upstairs the minute she’s able, Ethan puts a pot of coffee on and brings Emma a cup.

“Your database,” he says, and gestures, kind of pained. "Lemme come in sometime, take a look.”

"You sure?"

Ethan shrugs. "You'd be doin' me a favor more than the other way around. Sam says I need to start gettin' out more, but Lord knows I ain't goin' back to bartendin'."

Emma laughs at that, then looks a little appalled at herself for laughing. "Any time," she says. "I can take you in over the weekend if you want, when it's less crowded."

"Oh, you got weekend people now?"

Emma grimaces. "Oh, do we ever." She takes a sip of coffee and squints at Ethan. “I don’t suppose you have weekend plans,” she says drily. “Hot date?”

Ethan sighs, running a hand through his hair as Emma laughs at him. “Okay,” he says wearily, “I’ll bite. What gave me away this time?”

Annoyed as he is, at least Emma looks genuinely amused. “You seem suspiciously happy. Saturday night?”

Ethan groans buries his face in his hands. “Tomorrow night,” he says.

“Should I expect you back tomorrow night, too?” she teases. “Or is this a getting home Saturday kind of date?”

“I don’t _know_ ,” he says into his palms. His face is going hot. _Now_ it’s easy to remember that Emma is older than him.

Emma says, “Well, tell Billy I said hello. Go get some sleep; sounds like you might need to be well-rested for tomorrow night.”

The moment feels eerily like Matthew ribbing him about his first college boyfriend. He peeks through his fingers to see Emma rolling her eyes at him. He misses Matthew so much all of the sudden, misses seeing him and Emma next to each other, leaning in to laugh at their private jokes, flicking water at each other. He also feels so embarrassed that he wishes he could sink into the floor, but, hey, Matthew made him feel like that a lot, too.

But at least Emma’s still here, laughing at him from across the table. The woman who opened her home to him when he was just finished getting his stomach pumped at Massachusetts General Hospital, despite the fact she owed him nothing -- welcoming in her dead husband’s dead-end younger brother too fucked up to stay sober.

Ethan’s about to say something sentimental when Emma shakes her head at him and stands up, coffee held against her chest. “I hope things work out with you two,” she says wistfully. “You seem suited for each other.”

Ethan props his chin in his hand, meeting her gaze consideringly. “I hope things work out too,” is all he can think to say.

She smiles kind of sadly and leaves him alone in the kitchen.

The only thing he can think to do is text Billy: _Looking forward to tomorrow night_.

A couple minutes later, he gets a reply: _Me too :)_.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am, uh, super sorry this took so long?? Thank you to anyone still reading, omg
> 
> Heads up: this chapter contains references to previous suicidal ideation and hard drug use, though not in detail

The thing about Billy is that Ethan’s never before met anyone who made him want to hit fast-forward on his life. Ethan’s spent a lot of time wishing he could hit rewind, of course, wasted days at a time lying in bed, fantasizing about skipping back in time. First back to his drinking days, where he could drink to the point of numb incoherence, then back to before Matthew died, the one or two intense Christmases where they’d somehow both gotten leave. Back to before deployment, back to high school, back to childhood. Just skip backwards until he faded away into a time before he’d existed -- a coward’s way of fantasizing about suicide.

But Billy -- Billy makes him want to hurry through the next few months. He wants this to work out, wants to hurry up to the point where it’s not awkward to plan spending the night together, wants to take over Billy’s small kitchen, wants to sleep next to him, wants to trust him, wants to be trusted.

He’s pretty sure that in the dreams, he trusts Billy.

It unsettles him, how much the dreams change. Sometimes they’re so clear he could swear on waking that he’d just lived through them. Sharper and stronger than memory. And then sometimes he wakes with nothing but a feeling or an image, nothing more than the kickback of a heavy rifle or someone’s cool palm pressed against his forehead. Mornings like that, sometimes Ethan will page through the notebook he keeps on his nightstand and read back his own unsteady scrawl, and even though his handwriting his familiar, the words mean nothing. He can’t even remember waking and writing _I’m in the belltower of a burned-out church, Billy helping pull the bell up while I watch from above, sniper’s habit: always watching for the best angles._

Those mornings, trying to remember makes him feel crazy. And when he’s in that strange place where he can’t remember any of his dreams, where he’s not really so sure that Billy looks so familiar after all, it reminds him of the first day after a bad bender: poking back through his own memory to seek out the spots where the night fades into black and he wakes up on a stranger’s couch. Trying to piece together how he ended up getting socked in the jaw behind a fake Irish pub in the suburbs. Wondering if he’d _done_ cocaine in an unfamiliar bar bathroom or just watched other people do cocaine. He’d lie on the kitchen floor, face on the cool linoleum while he sweated out the hangover, searching through his memory with the same thoroughness and clinicality of a doctor feeling for tender spots around a joint. Here’s what I remember; here’s where everything fades.

And, of course, what you lose to a blackout, that’s lost forever. Sometimes you can remember the events surrounding the fuzzy edges of the blackout: what came just before your brain shut down trying to protect itself, what came just after you started being able to form memories again.

That fucks him up, too, the idea of something being lost forever. He doesn’t like that.

Ethan wakes in the early hours of Friday morning and tosses and turns, thinking about how many hours of his life he’s lived and won’t remember. They tell you in DUI school that blacking out doesn’t happen just from getting drunk. It happens from raising your blood-alcohol content too quickly. The spike in your BAC is what makes your brain panic and stop committing things to memory. In the space between Matthew’s death and moving in with Emma and Rose, Ethan would wager there’s nothing he really wants to remember. But having forgotten -- or, more accurately, having never even known what happened in those long stretches of inebriated hours -- well, it bothers him the same way trying to remember dreams does when the dreams seem all distant.

After an hour, somewhere around three in the morning that Friday, Ethan gives up and gets up, softly paces the length of his room. He tries to remember the way he dreams about Billy. It seems important, in the moment, the way he dreams. But recent memories, vicious in their intensity, keep crowding out the hazy things he remembers himself dreaming. Ethan tries to remember the dream of being in a bell tower and looking down at Billy on the ground and can only remember the last time he saw Billy: Billy leaning inside his own doorway, watching Ethan walk to his car, all nervous knowing Billy was watching him, but at the same time ecstatic and content from the high of intimate human touch after so long. It’s so hard to turn away from the memory of Billy’s fingers digging into his shoulders as they kissed for the first time in Billy’s kitchen. Impossible to turn away from the memory of Billy whispering “Goody” like a prayer, like an appeal to some higher power, when he came harsh and bitter and unrepentant into Ethan’s mouth.

Ethan gets himself off and falls back asleep.

He wakes before his alarm and _this time_ there’s a dream vivid in the front of his brain: Billy fucking him hard into a mattress in a rented room. Thinking about it, already hard again, Ethan’s thoughts stutter -- the half-remembered, half-imagined feeling of billy pulling him up into an obscene kiss, Billy’s tongue hot in his mouth while Billy’s all the way inside of him -- just -- 

Ethan palms his cock and grinds up into his own grip and whines quiet when he comes for teh second time that morning, imagining Billy pinning him down to the mattress, imagining Billy biting his throat. He stares at the ceiling, waiting for his vision to clear. Panting in bed, he wants to call Billy. Wants to beg into his voicemail. Doesn’t know what he wants to beg for, though -- to get fucked, to remember, maybe for forgiveness -- forgiveness for what?

He waits sleeplessly for his alarm to ring, then turns it off and dry-swallows his medication and goes thoughtlessly through his exercises, ‘til he’s shaking. He takes a cold shower. He goes straight back to bed. He pulls his heavy comforter up to his chin and curls around himself and falls back asleep. He wakes at eleven a.m. and tries to shove down the panic rising in his throat. He stands on the porch alone for a few minutes before panicking and going back inside and collapsing against the refrigerator and sobbing into his hands. Tries not to think about why.

He takes the beta-blocker but not the sedative. He wanders into the backyard with a cup of decaf coffee clutched close to his chest. The leaves have fallen off the trees that line the street, but back here there’s not just maples and oaks but a thin grove of pine trees before the property line buckles into a ditch, and the ditch extends far enough that the next house behind Emma’s property line is a little distant. To the left, to the right, those houses are nearby enough that Ethan feels a little closed in by them, but staring straight ahead through the bare deciduous trees and green pines, well, something opens up inside him. He sits down on the cold ground and counts his breaths.

He does everything Dr. Q has ever told him to. He focuses on the sharp taste of his coffee, on the heat of the mug between his hands. It doesn’t feel like focusing helps, but he does it anyways. The sun rises higher in the sky, and after a while, he finishes his coffee and goes back inside. He makes scrambled eggs with tarragon for lunch and watches something on TV that slides straight out of his head. Does forty minutes on the treadmill and showers again. Towels his hair dry. Dresses in the clean clothes he’s picked out: well-worn jeans, an old t-shirt, a button-up sweater that Emma bought for him years ago that he’s maybe never worn before. He stares at himself in the bathroom mirror and tries not to think too hard.

When he unplugs his phone from the charger in his room, he has three new texts, the first two from Billy: _haven’t learned to cook since the last time i saw u, do u want chinese again?_ , and then _many other options_ and an attached picture of a splay of take-out menus. Ethan laughs to himself, standing barefoot in the room above the garage. He texts back, _Chinese is fine, but pretty much anything else is fine, too, long as the company’s good I’m not picky about food_.

The third text is from Sam: _How you holding up?_

He texts back: _Rough morning, feel better now though_.

By the time he leaves to pick up Rose, he feels steadier. He and Billy have agreed on Thai food. Rose cagily deigns to answer a few questions about her friends at school, then asks if she burns a CD, will he play it in the car after picking her up on Monday?

He says yes, though comments that he can’t promise to not complain about it, and she rolls her eyes and groans at him without conviction. The easy sort of give-and-take they slip into naturally. It cheers him and makes him mourn for her that she doesn’t get to grow up with Matthew picking her up, both at the same time. 

By the time he leaves for Billy’s, the panic that overwhelmed him for most of the morning and early afternoon seems as distant as another life. He turns down heat in his car and drives to Billy’s house with his windows down and his collar turned up. The cold air is bracing, makes him feel awake and careless. He nearly turns on the radio a few minutes into the drive, but it’s not worth the risk of something startling him and ruining his mood. Maybe he could take a page out of Rose’s book, ask her to burn some CDs. Or, hell, even go buy some somewhere, isn’t that a thought? _Go somewhere._

It’s only when he’s knocked on Billy’s door, waiting to be let in, that the nervousness comes back: a fluttering in the pit of his stomach, hands shaking a bit in the pockets of his Army surplus jacket. He checks his pockets all careful, focusing on the ritual: the reassuring weight of his wallet and keys, his phone in the back pocket of his jeans, two pill bottles in his inner pocket.

He’s almost startled when the doors swings open a moment later. There’s Billy grinning at him, just as handsome as always, and all Ethan’s nervousness comes rushing back, but a reckless sort of joy with it. Ethan can feel himself grin back, has to remind himself to step inside, let Billy close the door behind them.

And then Billy’s mouth is against his, a soft, closed-mouth kiss hello, but Ethan maybe leans into it a little too eagerly. Can’t bring himself to regret it, though, not when he feels Billy’s breath against his cheek, earns a faint noise of pleasure from Billy that he feels more than hears.

Ethan twines his fingers into the hair at the back of Billy’s neck and pulls away from the kiss to drag his teeth down Billy’s earlobe, tugging gently at his earring, and he swears it’s like Billy melts. “You bastard,” Billy murmurs, hands resting against Ethan’s chest. Ethan drags his fingertips down Billy’s neck and kisses the edge of his jaw, hums as he threads his hand through Billy’s hair again.

He’s probably getting ahead of himself, he thinks, leaned back against Billy’s front door, one of Billy’s hands over his heart. He noses Billy’s cheek. “Sorry,” he says. He probably doesn’t sound very sorry. “Glad to see you.”

“Glad to see you too,” Billy says. Ethan’s pleased at how breathless he sounds.

This time, it’s so easy: less awkward, less clumsy than before. Billy tells him he’s already called in the delivery order, and they wander into Billy’s living room, sprawl onto the couch together. Billy hands him the remote and lets Ethan go through his Netflix queue -- mostly documentaries and martial arts movies and crime procedurals, which somehow makes perfect sense. Billy recommends a documentary on sushi that he’s seen before but not recently, and Ethan half-watches it while they talk idly about food in New Orleans vs. food in Boston, and then the food gets there and they leave the TV playing in the background while the conversation veers into Billy telling stories about his team in Korea getting drunk and lost in Japan, Ethan firing back with a boot camp story about one of his friends drunkenly stealing a Jeep -- it’s easy, it’s so easy, and it’s so perfect to watch Billy laugh so hard he nearly knocks over his carton of rice, and it’s easy to leave his food on the coffee table and climb on top of him and kiss him and taste curry in his mouth, to tug Billy’s shirt off and kiss his way down Billy’s stomach, it’s all so _easy_ and _good_.

And this time when Billy’s half-collapsed on top of him while he catches his breath, when Billy shifts and says, “You can stay the night, you know,” Ethan grins and says, “Well, if it ain’t too much trouble,” and Billy flicks at him. Billy puts on another movie that Ethan is too drowsy to really pay attention to, letting endorphins drift through him instead, nods off and wakes to Billy yawning and pushing himself up to stick their leftovers in the fridge.

Billy’s bedroom is cleaner than last time he saw it, Ethan thinks, but that’s the only thing he processes before he’s under the covers, Billy settling into place beside him.

And then he dreams--

_So this is it, Goodnight thinks, a sandbag digging into his back, rifle braced over his thighs. His ribs ache from breathing heavy for so long, and half his head hasn’t caught up to the fact he’s back, that he really did turn his horse and come charging back to Rose Creek to die._

_He turns to see Billy’s body in shadow but his face caught by the sun sliding through the slats of the clocktower. He’s got one hand tucked into his vest, blood staining his shirtsleeves. Lord knows it’s hardly the first time he’s watched Billy bleed, but he’s realizing it’s probably gonna be the last._

_He swallows hard, gripping his gun hard. Of course this where he dies: next to Billy. Billy who’s already caught a bullet that’ll kill him, Billy who winces as he turns his head to stare back at Goodnight, shining with sweat, pale, lips tinged blue._

_Lord, I’m so sorry, Goodnight thinks. He’d always expected memories to rush in during the last minutes before death, but instead he just stares at Billy. What a marvel of a man. What a miracle to know him. Billy stares back at him, and Goodnight wonders what he’s thinking._

_And then there’s no time left to think, and they’re both back on their feet, and--_

Ethan bolts up, instinctively reaching to his left for his Whitworth, finds nothing but empty air, _he doesn’t own a Whitworth_ , what the hell -- he can hear his own heartbeat. He throws himself out of bed, collides with a wall, catches himself, breathes in through his teeth. There’s something wrong -- someone’s about to die, but he can’t remember who -- if he could only remember -- 

“Goody?”

Billy’s voice -- _Billy_. Ethan’s knees give out from under him, and he staggers against the wall, turning to see Billy sitting up, squinting at him. “Billy,” Ethan says. If he didn’t know better, he’d think his heart was about to give out. His head feels fuzzy; he feels like he’s watching himself from far away.

“What’s wrong?”

The way Billy asks, though -- he’s nervous.

Ethan swallows hard. “You remember, don’t you?”

He doesn’t mean to ask that question. It feels like it just falls out of him, like he can’t control what he’s doing. His hands feel numb, his face feels numb.

Billy sighs. “Not everything,” he says, real quiet. He doesn’t try to move any closer, just sits at the edge of the bed, silhouette just barely illuminated by the distant light from the kitchen. “Most of it.”

“I got us killed,” Ethan says hollowly. He leans against the wall and lets his vision go fuzzy. He’s cold, he thinks. There’s sweat chilling on his neck and down his back. He can feel his arms shaking, but that doesn’t translate to any sort of urgency, no, just dull dread. Little flashes of that last day keep drowning out everything else: the moment he turned his horse, tossing his rifle to Billy without having to check the other man had caught it, that first bullet catching him--

_“Reminds me of what my daddy used to say--”_

“Goody,” someone says sharply. “Goody, can you hear me?”

_“They’ve got a goddamned Gatling gun!”_

Billy’s got him gently by the shoulders, staring straight at him, and Ethan’s vaguely aware of the fact he’s staring back, that his vision is swimming in and out, that he feels sick. “Billy,” he says.

“It’s me.”

“I need my jacket. The living room.”

Billy nods. He wants to say something, Ethan thinks, but doesn’t, just turns and is gone. Ethan fumbles his way over to the end of the bed and sits, digging his fingernails into his knees, biting hard on the inside of his cheek, waiting. Billy’s back fast, crouching in front of him with Ethan’s jacket in his hands. “What do you need?” he asks.

“Ativan. Inside pocket. Just one of ‘em.”

He knows there’s two things of pills in there and lets his eyes close as Billy messes with them. Billy grabs one of his hands and turns it up and presses the pill into his palm, and Ethan tucks it under his tongue without thinking, lets it dissolve into grit. The mattress dips beside him, and Billy’s hand rests kinda light on the small of his back, just his fingertips. Ethan breathes in his nose and out his mouth and leans into the touch, eyes still closed, and Billy traces circles with his thumb, still quiet. His heartbeat starts to slow. The phantom stench of gunpowder and blood starts to fade. He can still feel himself trembling, but it’s not getting worse anymore. “They had a machine gun,” he hears himself say. “A Gatlin’ gun.”

“Did we win?”

“I don’t know.”

“Ain’t no real winnin’ for us, I mean. But the -- the people we were there for. I wonder if we won.” He scratches his fingernails into his skin hard. Billy’s hand stills. “We lost. But the -- the…”

“Yeah,” Billy says.

“I left. I left you.”

“You came back.”

“Not in time,” Ethan whispers. “Not in time I didn’t.”

He hears Billy shift on the mattress. “If you didn’t leave and come back, we wouldn’t have known about the Gatling gun. We’d have just died quicker.” His voice is flat.

Ethan finally opens his eyes and turns to Billy. He’s not quite back in his body enough to feel embarrassed by the tears he can tell are gathering in his eyes. “I was the whole reason you were in that godforsaken town in the first place, and I didn’t even--”

“Goody,” Billy says, “I knew you’d come back.”

“That doesn’t make it any better.” He finds himself laughing hoarsely, digging his thumbs into his temples, just barely rocking back and forth.

He feels sick -- of course part of him didn’t want to remember.

Of course he’d run.

Of course it wasn’t a matter of waiting to see how he’d fuck this up -- he’d already fucked up.

“Goody,” Billy hisses, “don’t leave me again. Please. Please, don’t…”

That’s when something in Ethan shatters because it hits him then, overwhelming and all at once, that Billy’s just as choked up as him, that his eyes are shining a bit too brightly. 

He shifts to face Billy, who won’t quite look at him. “Never,” he says. He grabs Billy’s face, stares straight in his eyes. “I swear to you, so long as I live, long as you want me, I ain’t ever leavin’ you behind again.” He fights the urge to qualify, to insist this time he has nothing to offer, that Billy doesn’t need him, that Billy deserves better -- the dark conviction of that is still solid inside him, but that’s not important. What’s important is Billy’s shaky exhale, him raising a hand to rest on top of Ethan’s, still cradling his face. Ethan tugs him closer, and Billy slumps easily against his chest. Ethan pulls him close as he can and nuzzles into his hair. “‘m sorry, cher,” he whispers, hating the way Billy’s clinging to his shirt like he’s about to walk off. “All yours, ‘m all yours. Goin’ nowhere.”

“Good,” Billy whispers back.

Ethan tugs them both back onto the bed, lying down facing each other, Billy’s face still pressed to Ethan’s chest. He fumbles to pull Billy’s comforter over them, just up to the waist. They’re remembering how to slot their bodies together: Ethan with an arm over Billy’s shoulders, Billy with an arm around Ethan’s waist, pressed together tight like they’re sharing a grave. The morbidity of the image makes Ethan clench his eyes tight and inhale the scent of Billy’s hair. They’re alive. They’re together. There’s no one coming for them. All Ethan has to do is not fuck it up. Billy hooks his calf over Ethan’s knee to pull him even closer, and Ethan slips his thigh between Billy’s in response, slides his fingers up to the nape of Billy’s neck to toy with the hair there. Billy’s death grip on Ethan’s shirt gradually loosens, and he traces the space between Ethan’s shoulder blades. Lying like this, chest to chest, legs tangled together, Ethan can feel the tension slowly ease from Billy’s body, the way Billy’s breaths ease, the way his neck relaxes. Ethan pulls back just enough to kiss the top of Billy’s head. 

And then:

“I followed you there to die,” Billy says.

Ethan wants to -- wants to say something, but he doesn’t know what. His throat is all closed up out of nowhere.

Billy’s voice is measured, calm. “I knew we’d probably be buried there from the moment we left, and I didn’t care. You were my whole world. I knew what I was getting into.”

Ethan feels his chest hitch and his eyes go hot. “Jesus Christ, Billy,” he whispers. He lets Billy roll him onto his back and climb over him. Billy kisses him unhurriedly, only pulling away when Ethan jerks back to sob into his fist. Ethan can’t tell what feelings come from right now and which ones come from the life he lived before. Everything’s muddled together, and he can’t think straight at all, but Billy’s got him pinned to the mattress, is running his hands down Ethan’s chest like the pressure might help ground him, and it’s so strange, this feeling of newness and familiarity all wrapped up in one thing. Ethan says, “I’m goddamned terrified.”

Billy’s hands roam up to his shoulders as he leans down to kiss the tip of Ethan’s nose. “Me too,” he whispers back. His eyes are shiny in the low light.

Ethan pushes himself up on his elbows to catch Billy in a kiss. Everything that isn’t Billy feels wrong -- the guilt and fear and shame all tangled up in his chest, the flickers of memories that fade before he can really get a handle on them -- but Billy, Billy’s perfect, his long fingers, his mouth opening up against Ethan’s, the way Ethan feels Billy’s unsteady inhales when they pull away from each other just long enough to breathe. Billy grabbing his hair and using it to drag him back down to the mattress and Billy kissing him hard and demanding and Ethan giving up everything he can, hearing himself whimper.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he says into Billy’s mouth. And Billy says nothing back. He keeps Ethan’s body covered with his own like he’s shielding him from live fire, and he lets Ethan apologize until his voice starts to go, and they fall asleep with their limbs tangled together, exhausted.

Ethan wakes up feeling cold. His eyes feel dry and hot, and he remembers with a rush where he is. Billy’s voice trails in from the hallway: “Yeah, I’m sorry. Thank you.” The gentle creak of hardwood floors. “I’ll get some rest. Thanks again.”

Ethan rolls onto his back and half-sits up, sees Billy in the doorway, phone to his ear. He says goodbye and hangs up, then pads over to the bed, unceremoniously flops down face-first next to Ethan.

Ethan adjusts himself so he can rest one hand against Billy’s bare back. “Thought you had work,” he says. His voice sounds scratchy even to him.

Billy mutters something into the mattress, then wiggles around, turns his head toward Ethan. “Called in sick,” he says. His hair is sticking up, and Ethan finds himself reaching up to smooth it down. Billy hums in approval.

“Shorter that it used to be,” Ethan says. He ghosts his fingers over the shell of Billy’s ear down to his earlobes, thumbing the silver studs he wears. “And these are new.”

Even in the low light, Ethan can see Billy’s eyes drift open. He looks tired, and Ethan almost feels bad for talking, like he should let Billy go back to sleep. “You still remember,” Billy says.

Ethan almost pulls back, but there’s caution in Billy’s voice that he’s not used to. He goes back to petting at Billy’s hair, threading his fingers through again and again. “Yeah,” Ethan says.

“Got my ears pierced after the tattoo,” Billy says, eyes drifting closed again. “Tattoo after my mother stopped talking to me.” Silence for a long moment. Billy’s voice is quiet, his accent thicker than usual. Ethan remembers with a pang the way -- before -- Billy’s accent would come out strong when the opium had kicked in, the way he’d been about it the first few times they’d smoked together, like he was daring Ethan -- Goodnight -- to say something, offering no relief or gratitude when he hadn’t. “Being gay in Korea is different than here. And it was awhile ago, even more different then.”

Ethan makes a pained noise, shifts a little closer. He isn’t sure what to say. Billy’s face looks just how he remembers from before, and emotion fills up his throat as he stares. “Strange there’s still so much I don’t know about you,” he says, real quiet.

“We have time,” Billy says.

“How long have you remembered for?”

Billy hmms and shrugs a little, shoulders shifting under Ethan’s forearm. “Bits and pieces for a long time,” he says. “More of it after meeting you.”

The way he says it sounds confessional, a little guarded. Ethan lets his eyes close too and thinks about how desperate he was to get close to Billy even without remembering, wonders how Billy managed to hold up, alone and remembering for both of them. He’s half asleep when Billy turns to his side, his back to Ethan’s chest, and Ethan adjust himself to curl around Billy protectively, one arm his chest.

“This time if Sam shows up askin’ for any favors, we’ll just tell him to go to hell,” Ethan says absently.

“Goody,” Billy says, voice cracking, “please go to sleep.” But then his shoulder shake in silent laughter as Ethan noses Billy’s hair, breathing in, smiling to himself. Ethan sleeps deep and dreamlessly until late morning.


	8. Chapter 8

Remembering doesn’t make anything easier at all.

It makes most everything a dozen times harder.

He’ll be driving and suddenly not know what to do with a steering wheel, feeling like there should be horse and saddle under him instead of however many tons of metal. Sometimes, if only for seconds at a time, he forgets who Emma is.

He forgets who Rose is.

He forgets  _ Matt _ .

It comes back, of course, his knowledge of the present -- his knowledge of himself, as he is, in this life. But it’s unsettling. Worse than the nightmares. An all-new kind of flashback, tearing him not just out of the present but out of his  _ life _ .

And there’s not just twice the impossible urge to drink. It’s more than that. A lifetime’s worth of memories of being an unrepentant alcoholic -- though no one woulda called him one back then,  _ before _ , sure. Not just that, though. There’s the memories of the peaceful opium stupor. Of jonesing for that, too. Sweating and shaking and panting in the middle of some empty desert and counting his mount’s every footfall as one instant closer to the next town, where he might get some fix -- seeing Billy up ahead of him, probably thinking the same thoughts, nauseated and reeling just the same as Goody. (Ethan.)

For the first time in years he finds himself wanting opiates. Wakes up and fumbles for his pill bottles and finds himself with a palmful of tiny white benzos, not the yellow 40s of oxy that he  _ wants _ , he wants them so badly.

It all bleeds into memories that are his. Or that are his from  _ this  _ life. Different deserts, but blood smells the same no matter what.

He can’t tell Dr. Q. Or, he can’t tell him the truth.

But for the first time in a long time he talks about deployment. He talks about Matt; he talks about coming back. About his blundering readjustment to civilian life.

If Dr. Q is surprised by his newfound willingness to discuss these things, he doesn’t show it.

-

Being with Billy makes things easier.

Of course it does.

They don’t talk about it -- the past -- do they need to?

-

He and Sam keep meeting up. Usually once a week, sometimes every other week when it’s the case that Sam gets busy or Ethan finds a way to end up at Billy’s.

It takes him the better part of two months to screw up the courage to introduce them to each other.

He keeps telling himself that maybe some things belong in the past. That maybe Sam doesn’t remember. (He’s too much a coward to ask, after all.) Maybe introducing him to Billy will make him remember, and it’ll ruin everything.

But Sam asks, here and there, about the dates he knows Ethan’s going on. And Ethan gets scared, sometimes, by the way around Billy, the whole world seems to melt away. Ethan’s shown a lotta attachment to things that make the rest of the world melt away. It’s nearly killed him more than once.

Dr. Q tells him he’s not worried, but Ethan can’t tell him the whole story. Not really.

Sam, though. Maybe Sam he could tell.

Maybe Sam could help.

One week Billy texts him,  _ Thursday _ ?, and it’s the perfect set-up: Ethan texts back,  _ Meeting with Sam Thursday _ , then  _ if you want to meet us for coffee maybe your place after _ . It’s a fraught fifteen minutes waiting for a response:  _ when/wheres the place? _

Ethan texts back the name and 8pm and  _ just off the orange line  _ when it’s been another ten minutes with no reply.

Finally, Billy:  _ ur meeting him there at 8 or u want me there at 8? _

_ You could come at 8 if you wanted, _ Ethan texts back,  _ but I’m free other nights if that’s better _ . 

Another ten minutes of low-level panic, choking on the urge to offer to cancel on Sam, then:

_ works for me :) _

-

It’s not long after they get to the coffee shop that Ethan manages to choke out, “I’ve been seein’ someone.”

Sam’s mouth quirks as he wraps both hands around his paper cup of coffee. “Oh, really? Do tell.”

Ethan glances away to stare at the street. It’s dark now, and the coffee shop windows keep getting lit up by passing cars. “His name’s Billy,” he says, face flushing. When he looks back at Sam, Sam’s eyebrows are both raised, but he’s smiling.

“Well I’ll be damned,” Sam says thoughtfully.

“You remember,” Ethan says, “don’t you.”

“Sure do,” Sam says, voice measured and steady as always. “Not everything, but enough. Remember you. Remember Billy, too, not that we knew each other that long.”

What was he ever even worried about?

Sam’s always been three steps ahead of him, in whatever life. Of course this one would be no different.

Ethan settles back in the booth, rubbing his jaw with the palm of one hand. He can feel himself disassociating a little. His own touch feels dull and unfamiliar, and the radio playing seems over-loud for no reason. For some reason, the first thing he thinks to ask is, “Did we win?”

Of course Sam knows what he means. “By a certain definition, I suppose,” he says. “A few of us survived. Bogue died. I guess you could say that Rose Creek won, but we didn’t.”

“Huh,” Ethan says. He breaks off a little segment of biscotti and dips it in his coffee. It tastes strange and muted. “You, uh, find the others?”

“Well, I can’t say it was hard finding Mrs. Emma Cullen. You two weren’t so close last go-around, though.”

Jesus, Ethan thinks, Emma. His heart is pounding. He reaches into his jacket to double-check his Ativan’s still there and is reassured by the slick familiar feel of the pill bottle.

Sam’s watching him cautiously. “Haven’t seen hide or hair of Horne, and I think have I found though have never talked to Red Harvest. He’s got a punk band.”

Ethan grins despite himself.

“Faraday I met during deployment. Crazy sonuvabitch still and nearly as much of a drunk as you were. Vasquez apparently tracked him down in Tijuana. Not sure what they’re up to now, and not sure I want to know.”

“This is crazy, Sam,” he hears himself say. He dunks another piece of biscotti into his coffee and stares at it dripping. “I feel like I’m goin’ crazy.”

“I’m glad you found Billy,” Sam says. “Always wanted to ask. Wasn’t sure if you remembered at all, didn’t want to make you remember before you were ready.”

He abandons the biscotti on his saucer and leans in against the table. “He’s perfect, Sam,” he says, voice a little hoarse. “You know where he was the whole time? Teachin’ Rose gymnastics.”

Sam laughs a full-throated laugh at that, throwing his head back and everything. 

“I’ve been parkin’ outside the building he was in four times a week for years with no idea at all. Christ.”

Sam slaps his thigh and wheezes. “You’re kidding,” he says.

Ethan finds himself grinning. “I was so close to him the whole time an’ without the slightest goddamned idea.”

Sam pinches at the bridge of his nose, shaking his head. “The Lord works in mysterious ways, huh,” he says.

“I guess. He’s pickin’ me up after this. You can meet him.”

“I’d like that,” Sam says, voice low and serious. “I’d ask if he’s good to you, but I know he is.”

Ethan ducks his gaze to stare at his coffee. “I’m more worried about bein’ good to him,” he confides. He rubs at his jaw, thinking of this same conversation he’s had with Q a million times over. “You know me, I’m doin’ better, but I ain’t ever gon’ be quite right again, and I made my peace with that a long time ago. And Billy’s so good he makes me nervous, Sam. I ain’t got much to offer him. Last time we... “ He gestures vaguely, thinking clumsily of how awkward it is to talk about a past life with any seriousness at all. He sighs and ends up running his hand through his hair. “It ain’t like he needs me now to help him hustle or keep bounty hunters off his back.”

“And it’s not like you need him,” Sam says gently.

Ethan furrows his brow, startled. “I don’t follow,” he says.

“Look,” Sam says, leaning in, his tone of voice conspiratorial. “Last time, and I know this, you boys were smokin’ opium together half the time you were out in the open ‘cause Billy knew how to get it and you needed it for the shakes. And that’s not the case now. You made a lotta progress this year, Goody. Look at you. When I met you, you couldn’t stay sober twelve hours without someone sittin’ with you to keep you from walkin’ to the liquor store no matter the weather, no matter the hour. And you earned your sobriety, you fought for it hard, you fought for it alone. You had people willin’ to help, but you’re a proud man and did most of the work yourself. Used to be you couldn’t be out in the open for longer than half a minute ‘fore you’d start shakin’ and panickin’. And now here we are, a place you’ve never been before, you’re doing just fine. You don’t need him either. You’d be fine without him. You’re with him anyways ‘cause you boys just work together, don’t you? And it’ll be good for you to have somebody at your back you know you trust with your life, somebody you know would kill for you if he needed to.” Sam stares him down for a long moment, then grins. “I called you Goody, didn’t I.”

That startles a huff of laughter out of Ethan. “Yeah,” he says. “Billy does, too. S’alright.” He’s quiet for a moment, takes a sip of his mostly cool coffee. “Thanks,” he says stiffly.

“You just be good to him as you can. That’ll be plenty,” Sam says. “Now, when’s your boy gettin’ here? I wanna meet him.”

Ethan grins easily and glances up at the clock. Ten to eight. “Real soon, I think,” he says.

Just the thought of seeing Billy’s face again, nevermind it’s been just a few days since they last saw each other, lights him up from inside. He tries to ground himself to fight the tug of disassociation: cradles his coffee cup and concentrates on the vague warmth, the smoothness of the porcelain. Billy doesn’t need him, but Billy wants him; he doesn’t need Billy, but he wants him. It’s not just enough -- it’s so much more than enough that Ethan thinks he could maybe live off the feeling.

It’s just a few minutes before Billy arrives, and it’s everything Ethan can do not to get up to greet him at the door like a human Golden Retriever. He lets Billy sit down next to him in the booth like a civilized person, but he doesn’t stop himself from leaning in for a quick kiss, which Billy’s hums into happily. “Sam,” he says, beaming, “this is Billy, and Billy, this is Sam.”

“We’ve met,” Sam drawls, offering his hand. “A while ago.”

“Indeed,” Billy says, a hint of amusement in his voice, and they shake.

Ethan keeps his hand on Billy’s knee for most of the conversation that’s Billy and Sam feeling each other out. Billy eats the rest of Ethan’s biscotti. They all get up when one of the baristas flips the sign on the front door to “closed,” then cluster in the cold outside. Ethan’s been quiet, content to follow Billy’s lead, feeling warm and pleased even in the sharp winter air.

“Well, it was a pleasure to meet you, Billy,” Sam says with a grin. “I’ll be seein’ you around, I suspect.”

“I suspect so as well,” Billy says. He goes to shake Sam’s hand again, but Sam pulls him in for a quick hug, a slap on the back.

Ethan laughs, but Sam grabs him, too, pulls him in close and hugs him hard. Sam grabs him by the shoulders and stares him straight in the eyes. “Proud of you,” he says.

“Couldn’ta done it without you,” Ethan manages to say.

Sam claps him on the back. “Mm, maybe not,” he says, grinning as Ethan laughs, and Ethan watches him walk the block and a half to his car and get in.

“I like him,” Billy says, breaking the silence. He slips his hand into Ethan’s.

“Good. I like both of you, so that’s convenient,” Ethan says. He kisses Billy again just because he can, and they walk to Ethan’s car together in comfortable silence, hand in hand.

-

It’s going to be okay, Ethan tells himself in the dark of Billy’s bedroom. He’s woken up in the middle of the night, and he wants a drink, and he wants a smoke, and the strange feeling of sweat drying on his skin makes him, for once in his life, claustrophobic. He wants an expanse. He wants sand under his feet, nothingness from horizon to horizon.

It’s going to be okay, Ethan tells himself, and uneasily, he falls back asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey. anyone still reading this means the world to me. this was meant to be completed about a week ago, but, as per usual, life got in the way.
> 
> i started writing this before realizing just how much i had in common with ethan. still reckoning with that so many months later. so, uh, this update goes out to all my fellow addicts.
> 
> two more chapters to go. thank you <3


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